2.2.

Let us now consider, since we said a little before that the powers of the soul are seated in the mind and the heart, what power belongs to each part.

The philosophers, with great agreement, suppose that reason resides in the mind, shining before all counsels like a lamp, and ruling the will like a queen. For they imagine it to be so flooded with divine light that it can give the best counsel, and so furnished with strength that it can govern rightly.

Sense, on the other hand, they say is dull and dim-sighted, always creeping upon the ground, grovelling among gross and earthly objects, and never rising to true discernment.

Then they hold that the appetite, if it will submit to reason and refuse to surrender itself to sense, is carried to the pursuit of virtue, keeps the right path, and is formed into will. But if it gives itself over into bondage to sense, it is corrupted and depraved by it, and degenerates into lust.

In short, since, in their judgment, those powers of the soul of which we spoke above—understanding, sense, and appetite or will (the latter name now being more commonly received)—are present in man, they maintain that the understanding is endowed with reason, and is an excellent governor for ordering a good and happy life, provided only that it remain in its own excellence and exert the power naturally implanted in it.

They further teach that the lower motion of the soul, which they call sense, by which man is drawn away into error and delusion, is of such a kind that it may be tamed by the rod of reason and little by little driven out.

The will, meanwhile, they place between reason and sense, as occupying a middle position and possessing freedom of its own: so that, as it pleases, it may either obey reason or give itself over to be carried away by sense.

2.3.

They do not indeed deny—being forced by experience itself—that man establishes the rule of reason within himself only with great difficulty. For now he is enticed by the allurements of pleasure, now deceived by a false show of good, now violently shaken by ungoverned passions, and, as Plato says, drawn in different directions as though by cords or sinews.

For this reason Cicero also says that those little sparks given by nature are soon quenched by corrupt opinions and evil manners.

And when such diseases have once taken possession of the minds of men, they confess that they rage too violently to be easily restrained. Nor do they hesitate to compare them to wild horses, which, reason having been cast out—as though the charioteer had been thrown from the seat—run loose without measure or control.

Yet this they regard as beyond dispute: that virtues and vices are in our power. For if it is in our choice, they say, to do this or that, then it is also in our choice not to do it. Again, if not to do it, then also to do it. Now we seem to do by free choice the things that we do, and to abstain from those things from which we abstain. Therefore, if we do any good when we please, we can also omit it; and if we commit any evil, we can also avoid it.

Indeed, some of them went so far in their presumption as to boast that while it is the gift of the gods that we live, it is our own doing that we live well and holily.

Hence also that saying of Cicero in the person of Cotta: because each man acquires virtue for himself, no wise man has ever given thanks to God for it. “For,” he says, “we are praised for virtue, and in virtue we glory; which would not be the case if it were the gift of God and not from ourselves.” And a little later: “This is the judgment of all mortals, that fortune is to be sought from God, but wisdom must be taken from oneself.”

This, then, is the sum of the philosophers’ doctrine: that reason in the human understanding is sufficient for right government; that the will, being subject to it, is indeed solicited by sense to evil, yet because it has free choice, it cannot be prevented from following reason as its guide in all things.

2.4.

Among ecclesiastical writers, although there was none who did not acknowledge that man’s reason was grievously wounded by sin, and that the will was deeply entangled in corrupt desires, yet many of them leaned too far toward the philosophers. It seems to me that the ancient writers did this for two reasons: first, lest if they plainly confessed man’s impotence, they should provoke the laughter of the philosophers, with whom they were then contending; and second, lest they should furnish a fresh occasion for sloth to the flesh, which of itself is already far too sluggish toward good. Therefore, that they might teach nothing which common opinion would count absurd, they tried in some measure to reconcile the doctrine of Scripture with the dogmas of philosophy. Yet that they chiefly aimed at not making room for sloth is clear from their own words.

Chrysostom says in one place, “Because God has placed good and evil in our power, He has given us the freedom of choice; and He does not restrain the unwilling, but embraces the willing.” Again: “A man who is evil may often, if he will, be changed into good; and he who is good, through negligence, falls away and becomes evil. For the Lord made our nature free in choice, and imposes no necessity, but after providing fitting remedies leaves the whole matter to the decision of the sick man.” Again: “As without the help of God’s grace we can never do anything rightly, so unless we bring what is ours, we cannot obtain the favour that is above.” And earlier he had said, “That the matter may not be wholly of divine help, we also must bring something.” Thus this phrase is constantly on his lips: “Let us bring what is ours; God will supply the rest.” Jerome speaks to the same effect when he says, “It is ours to begin; it is God’s to perfect: ours to offer what we can, His to fulfill what we cannot.”

You see plainly that in these sayings they gave man more than was right in urging him to the pursuit of virtue, because they thought they could not otherwise rouse our inborn sluggishness unless they charged us with sinning by our own fault alone. How skilfully they did this, we shall see afterward. Certainly it will shortly appear that the statements just cited are utterly false.

Moreover, although the Greeks above the others, and Chrysostom above the Greeks, went beyond measure in exalting the power of the human will, yet all the ancient writers, Augustine excepted, vary, waver, or speak confusedly in this matter, so that scarcely anything certain can be gathered from their writings. Therefore we shall not spend much labour in setting out each man’s opinion in detail, but shall only gather from each what seems required by the argument before us. Those who came after, while each sought the praise of subtlety in defending human nature, gradually fell from bad to worse, one after another, until it came to be commonly believed that man was corrupted only in his sensual part, while reason remained entirely sound, and the will for the most part as well.

Meanwhile this saying was on every tongue: that man’s natural gifts were corrupted, but his supernatural gifts taken away. Yet scarcely one man in a hundred had even the slightest understanding of what this meant. For my own part, if I wished plainly to state what the corruption of nature is, I could easily rest in these words. But it greatly matters that we carefully consider what man can do when all the parts of his nature are corrupted and he is stripped of his supernatural gifts. Those, therefore, who boasted of being Christ’s disciples spoke too philosophically on this subject. And because they regarded man as though he still stood unfallen, the term free will always remained current among the Latins. The Greeks were not ashamed to use a term still more arrogant, for they called it αὐτεξούσιον, as though man possessed authority over himself.

Since, then, all men, even the common people, have been imbued with this principle, that man is endowed with free will, while some who wish to seem especially learned do not know how far that freedom extends, we must first examine the force of the term itself, and then from the plain teaching of Scripture determine what power man has by nature for good or evil. Though the term free will occurs constantly in the writings of all, few have defined what it is. Yet Origen seems to have given the definition commonly received among them when he said that it is a power of reason to discern good and evil, and a power of will to choose either. Augustine does not differ from this when he teaches that it is a power of reason and will by which good is chosen when grace assists, and evil when grace ceases. Bernard speaks more obscurely, desiring to be subtle, when he calls it a consent because of the inalienable freedom of the will and the undeviating judgment of reason. Nor is Anselm’s definition sufficiently plain for common use, when he says that it is the power of preserving rectitude for its own sake. Accordingly Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen rather embraced Augustine’s definition, because it was clearer and did not exclude the grace of God, without which they saw that the will is not sufficient for itself. Yet they also add formulations of their own, either because they thought them better, or more useful for fuller explanation.

First, they agree that the word arbitrium is to be referred chiefly to reason, whose office it is to distinguish between good and evil; while the epithet free properly belongs to the will, because it can incline either way. Therefore, since freedom belongs properly to the will, Thomas says it is most fitting to call free will an elective power, which, though compounded of understanding and appetite, yet inclines more toward appetite. Thus we now have their teaching as to where the power of free will is seated—namely, in reason and in will. It remains that we briefly see how much they attribute to each part.

2.5.

They commonly place intermediate matters—that is, things which do not concern the kingdom of God—under man’s free counsel, but refer true righteousness to the special grace of God and to spiritual regeneration.

Wishing to show this, the author of The Calling of the Gentiles lists three kinds of will: the first sensitive, the second animal, the third spiritual. He teaches that the first two are free in man, but that the last is the work of the Holy Spirit in man. Whether this is true will be treated in its proper place. For now my purpose is only to recount briefly the opinions of others, not to refute them. Hence it follows that when writers treat of free will, they do not chiefly ask what power it has in civil or external actions, but what it can do in obedience to the divine Law. I grant that the latter question is the chief one, yet I judge that the former must not be wholly neglected. I hope to give the best reason for this judgment. Now in the schools a distinction has prevailed which reckons three kinds of liberty: the first, freedom from necessity; the second, freedom from sin; the third, freedom from misery. Of these, the first is said to belong to man naturally, so that it can in no way be taken from him; the other two were lost through sin. I willingly receive this distinction, except that here necessity is wrongly confused with compulsion. How great the difference is between them, and how necessary it is to observe it, will appear elsewhere.
2.6.

If this is received, it will be beyond dispute that man does not have free will sufficient for good works unless he is helped by grace—and by that special grace which is given only to the elect through regeneration. For I make no account of those madmen who babble that grace is set forth equally and indiscriminately to all. But it is not yet clear whether man is wholly deprived of the power of doing good, or whether he still has some small and feeble power which can do nothing of itself, yet, when aided by grace, also performs its own part. When the Master of the Sentences seeks to explain this, he teaches that two kinds of grace are necessary for us, in order that we may be made fit for a good work. The first he calls operating grace, by which it comes to pass that we effectively will the good. The second he calls co-operating grace, which follows the good will by assisting it. In this division I dislike this: that while he attributes to the grace of God the effective desire for good, he implies that man already by his own nature somehow desires the good, though ineffectually. Bernard speaks in the same way: while affirming that the good will is indeed the work of God, he yet grants to man that by his own movement he desires such a good will.

But this is far from Augustine’s meaning, though Lombard seems to wish it thought that he took the division from Augustine.
In the second part I am troubled by an ambiguity which has produced a perverse interpretation. For they supposed that we co-operate with the second grace of God because it lies within our power either to make the first grace void by rejecting it, or to confirm it by obediently following it. The author of The Calling of the Gentiles expresses this in the following way: those who use the judgment of reason are free to depart from grace; therefore, not to have departed is counted as reward, and what cannot be done except by the co-operation of the Spirit is imputed to the merits of those by whose will it might have failed to be done. I wished to note these two points in passing, that you may see, reader, how far I differ even from the sounder Schoolmen. For I differ by a much greater distance from the more recent Sophists, as they have departed much farther from antiquity. Nevertheless, from this division we may understand in what sense they assigned free will to man. For Lombard finally declares that we are not said to have free will because we are equally able to do or think good and evil, but only because we are free from compulsion.

This freedom is not prevented, even though we are depraved, servants of sin, and able to do nothing but sin.
2.7.
Man, then, will be said to have free will in this sense: not because he has a free choice equally of good and evil, but because he does evil willingly, not by compulsion.

That much is true. But what purpose was there in adorning so small a thing with so proud a title? A noble liberty indeed, if man is not compelled to serve sin, yet is such a voluntary slave that his will is held bound in the fetters of sin. For my part, I detest battles over words, by which the Church is wearied in vain. Yet I judge that those terms must be religiously avoided which carry some absurd meaning, especially where the error is dangerous. For how many, I ask, when they hear free will assigned to man, do not at once imagine that he is master of his own mind and will, able of himself to turn in either direction?

“But,” someone will say, “this danger will be removed if the common people are carefully taught what the term means.” No indeed. Since the human mind naturally leans toward falsehood, it will more quickly drink in error from one little word than truth from a long explanation.

In this very term we have a clearer proof of this than could be wished. For almost all later generations, neglecting the old explanation, have fixed upon the bare derivation of the word, and so have been carried up into a deadly confidence.
2.8.

If the authority of the Fathers moves us: they indeed have the word continually in their mouths, yet at the same time declare how much they value its use. Augustine in particular does not hesitate to call the will a slave [Against Julian, Bk. 2]. Elsewhere he is angry against those who deny free will; but he declares his chief reason when he says: “Only let no one so deny the choice of the will as to wish to excuse sin” [Homily 53 on John]. Yet certainly he confesses elsewhere that without the Spirit man’s will is not free, since it lies subjected to lusts that bind and conquer it [Epistle to Anastasius 144]. Likewise: that when the will was overcome by the vice into which it fell, nature began to be without liberty [On the Perfection of Righteousness]. Likewise: that man, having ill used his free will, lost both himself and his free will [Enchiridion to Laurentius, ch. 30]. Likewise: that free will is held captive, so that it can do nothing toward righteousness [Bk. 3 to Boniface, ch. 8]. Likewise: that there will be no free will except such as the grace of God has set free [Bk. 1 to Boniface, ch. 3]. Likewise: that the righteousness of God is not fulfilled when the Law commands and man, as it were, acts by his own strength; but when the Spirit helps, and not man’s free will, but his will set free by God, obeys [Bk. 3, ch. 7]. And he gives a brief account of all these statements when he writes elsewhere that man, when he was created, received great powers of free will, but lost them by sinning [On the Words of the Apostle, Sermon 3]. Therefore in another place, after he has shown that free will is established through grace, he sharply attacks those who claim it for themselves apart from grace. “Why then,” he says, “do wretched men either dare to be proud of free will before they are set free, or of their own strength, if they have already been set free? Nor do they consider that in the very name of free will liberty itself is implied. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [2 Cor. 3:17]. If therefore they are the servants of sin, why do they boast of free will? For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage [2 Pet. 2:19]. But if they have been set free, why do they boast as of their own work? Are they so free as to refuse to be the servants of him who says, Without me ye can do nothing [John 15:5]?” [On the Spirit and the Letter, ch. 30].

Indeed in another place he seems even to mock the use of the term in jest, when he says that the will is free, but not freed: free from righteousness, slave to sin [On Rebuke and Grace, ch. 13]. He repeats and explains the same judgment elsewhere, where he teaches that man is not free from righteousness except by the choice of the will, but is not made free from sin save by the grace of the Saviour. He who testifies that man’s liberty is nothing else than emancipation, or manumission, from righteousness seems neatly to deride the empty name of it. Therefore if anyone permits himself the use of this word with no perverse understanding, on my part he shall not be troubled on that account; but because I judge that it cannot be retained without great danger, and that on the contrary it would be of great benefit to the Church if it were abolished, I myself would not wish to use it, and could wish that others, if they consult me, would abstain from it.
2.9.
I may perhaps seem to have brought a great prejudice upon myself in confessing that all ecclesiastical writers, Augustine excepted, have spoken so ambiguously or so variously on this matter that nothing certain can be drawn from their writings. For some will interpret this as though I wished to debar them from the right of vote because they are all opposed to me. But I have looked to nothing else than to consult, simply and in good faith, godly minds — which, if they wait upon the verdict of these writers in this matter, will always waver in uncertainty. For now they teach that man, stripped of the powers of free will, must flee to grace alone; now they either equip him, or seem to equip him, with weapons of his own. Yet it is not hard to show that, beneath such ambiguity of speech, while reckoning human virtue at nothing or at the least possible value, they have rendered to the Holy Spirit the entire praise of all good things — if I insert here certain of their sentences in which this is plainly taught. For what does that saying of Cyprian’s mean, so often celebrated by Augustine — that we are to glory in nothing, since nothing is our own [On the Predestination of the Saints; likewise to Boniface, Bk. 4, and elsewhere] — except that man, utterly emptied within himself, must learn to depend wholly upon God? What of that saying of Augustine and Eucherius, when they expound that Christ is the tree of life, and that whoever stretches forth his hand to him shall live; while the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the choice of the will, of which whoever tastes, having forsaken the grace of God, shall die [Bk. 1 on Genesis]? What of Chrysostom’s saying, that every man is not only by nature a sinner, but is wholly sin [Homily 1, On the Advent]? If nothing good is ours, if man from head to heel is wholly sin, if it is not even permitted to test how much the faculty of the will is worth — how then can the praise of a good work be parted between God and man? I could cite very many things of this kind from others; but lest anyone cavil that I select only what serves my cause and craftily pass over what opposes it, I refrain from such recitation. Yet this I dare affirm: however excessive they may sometimes be in extolling free will, this was their aim — to teach that man, turned wholly away from confidence in his own virtue, has his strength laid up in God alone. I now come to the plain unfolding of the truth in the consideration of man’s nature.
2.10.
What I premised at the beginning of this chapter, I am compelled to repeat here once more: that the more thoroughly each man is cast down and confounded by the awareness of his own calamity, poverty, nakedness, and shame, the more he has advanced in the knowledge of himself. For there is no danger that a man may take too much from himself, provided he learns to recover in God what he lacks in himself. But he cannot take to himself even the least thing beyond his right without ruining himself by empty confidence, and, by transferring divine honour to himself, becoming guilty of monstrous sacrilege. And truly, as often as this lust assails our mind, that we should desire to have something of our own — something, that is, that resides in us rather than in God — let us know that this thought is suggested to us by no other counsellor than him who induced our first parents to wish to be like gods, knowing good and evil. If it is a diabolical word that lifts man up in himself, let us give it no place — unless we are willing to take counsel from the enemy. It is sweet indeed to have such virtue of our own that we may rest in ourselves; but, lest we be enticed to that empty confidence, let us be deterred by so many weighty sentences which sternly prostrate us. Such as these: that cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm [Jer. 17:5]. Likewise: that the Lord delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man, but is moved toward those who fear him and look up to his goodness [Ps. 147:10]. Likewise: that he it is who giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength; who causes youths to faint and be weary, and young men utterly to fall; but they that hope in him alone shall be renewed in strength [Isa. 40:29]. All of which look to this end: that we lean on no opinion of our own strength, however small, if we wish to have God favourable to us, who resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble [Jas. 4:6]. Then let these promises also come back to mind: I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground [Isa. 44:3]. Likewise: Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters [Isa. 55:1]. These testify that none are admitted to receive God’s blessings save those who pine away in the sense of their own poverty. Nor are such sayings as this of Isaiah’s to be passed over: The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light [Isa. 60:19]. The Lord assuredly does not take away from his servants the splendour of the sun or the moon; but because he wills to appear in them alone as glorious, he calls their confidence far away even from those things which are accounted by them most excellent.
2.11.

That saying of Chrysostom’s has always greatly pleased me, that the foundation of our philosophy is humility [Homily on the Perfection of the Gospel]; and still more that of Augustine: “As the famous orator, when asked what was first in the precepts of eloquence, answered, ‘delivery’; what was second, ‘delivery’; what was third, ‘delivery’; so if you should ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, I should be pleased to answer, first, second, third, and always — humility” [Epistle 56, to Dioscorus]. Now by humility he does not mean that condition in which a man, conscious of some little virtue in himself, refrains from pride and arrogance; but that in which a man truly perceives himself to be such as has no refuge save in humility, as he declares elsewhere: “Let no man flatter himself: of himself he is Satan; what makes him blessed he has from God alone. For what hast thou of thine own but sin? Take to thyself the sin which is thine; for righteousness is of God” [Homily 49 on John]. Likewise: “Why is so much presumed concerning the possibility of nature? It is wounded, gashed, harassed, ruined. It needs true confession, not false defence” [On Nature and Grace, ch. 52]. Likewise: “When a man recognises that in himself he is nothing, and has no help from himself, the weapons within him are broken, the wars stilled. But it is necessary that all the weapons of impiety be crushed, broken, burned; that thou remain unarmed, having no help in thyself. The weaker thou art in thyself, the more does the Lord take thee up” [On Psalm 45]. So upon Psalm 70 he forbids us to call our own righteousness to mind, that we may acknowledge the righteousness of God; and shows that God so commends his grace to us that we may know ourselves to be nothing — that we stand only by God’s mercy, since of ourselves we are nothing but evil.

Let us not, then, contend here with God concerning our right, as though what is given to him were taken from our salvation. For as our lowness is his height, so the confession of our lowness has his compassion ready as a remedy. Nor indeed do I demand that a man, unconvinced, should yield of his own accord, and, if he has any faculties, turn his mind away from them in order to be brought into true humility; but that, laying aside the disease of φιλαυτία and φιλονεικία (self-love and contentiousness — by which, blinded, he thinks of himself higher than is just), he should rightly recognise himself in the truthful mirror of Scripture.
2.12.

That common saying which they have taken from Augustine pleases me well: that the natural gifts in man were corrupted through sin, while the supernatural were extinguished. For by this latter member, they understand both the light of faith and that righteousness which would suffice for the attainment of the heavenly life and eternal blessedness. Therefore, by renouncing the kingdom of God, man was at the same time deprived of the spiritual gifts with which he had been furnished for the hope of eternal salvation. Whence it follows that he is so banished from the kingdom of God that whatever pertains to the blessed life of the soul is extinguished in him, until by the grace of regeneration he recovers it. Among these are: faith, love of God, charity toward neighbours, zeal for holiness and righteousness. All these, since Christ restores them to us, are reckoned as adventitious and beyond nature; and from this we gather that they had been abolished. Again, soundness of mind and uprightness of heart were taken away together with them; and this is the corruption of the natural gifts. For although some remnant of understanding and of judgement remains together with the will, yet we shall not say that the mind is whole and sound, since it is both weak and plunged in much darkness; and the depravity of the will is more than sufficiently known. Therefore, since reason — by which man distinguishes between good and evil, by which he understands and judges — is a natural gift, it could not be wholly destroyed; but it was partly weakened, partly vitiated, so that disfigured ruins appear. In this sense John says that the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not [John 1:5]: by which words both points are clearly expressed — that in the perverse and degenerate nature of man some sparks still glimmer which show him to be a rational creature, differing from the brutes because endowed with understanding; and yet that this light is so smothered by the dense fog of ignorance that it cannot emerge with any effect. So the will, because it is inseparable from man’s nature, did not perish; but it was bound fast by depraved desires, so that it cannot seek anything right. This is indeed a full definition, but one that must be unfolded at greater length.

Therefore — that the order of our discourse may proceed according to the first distinction by which we divided man’s soul into intellect and will — let us first sift the powers of the intellect. To condemn it to perpetual blindness so that no understanding of any kind whatever is left to it conflicts not only with the word of God, but with the very experience of common sense. For we see that there is implanted in the human mind some desire — I know not what — of searching out the truth, after which it would not in the least aspire had it not first caught some scent of it. Already, then, there is in the human intellect some discernment in this, that it is by nature seized with the love of truth — the neglect of which in brute beasts proves their gross sensibility, void of reason. And yet this longing, such as it is, fails before it has run its course; for it presently sinks into vanity. For the mind of man, by reason of its dullness, cannot hold the right path of investigating truth, but wanders through various errors, and groping as in darkness stumbles again and again, until at last it vanishes after a long pawing. So, in seeking the truth, it shows how unfit it is to seek and to find it. Then it labours under another grave vanity: that it often does not discern upon what objects it is profitable to bestow true knowledge. Hence, it torments itself with ridiculous curiosity in pursuing trifling and worthless matters; while to the things most necessary to be known it either gives no heed, or turns aside contemptuously and rarely; certainly it scarcely ever applies its zeal to them in earnest. Of this depravity, although profane writers complain everywhere, they themselves are found almost all entangled in it. Wherefore Solomon, throughout his whole Ecclesiastes, after rehearsing those pursuits in which men think themselves very wise, pronounces them nevertheless empty and frivolous.
2.13.
Yet the intellect’s efforts do not always entirely fail; it does attain something, especially when it bends itself to lower matters. Nor is it so dull that it tastes nothing of higher things, however carelessly it pursues them — though here its capacity is far from equal. For when the mind is raised above the bounds of this present life, then is its weakness especially manifest. Wherefore, that we may better perceive how far it advances in each thing according to the degrees of its capacity, it is worth our while to set forth a distinction. Let this, then, be the distinction: that there is one understanding of earthly things, another of heavenly. By earthly things I mean those which do not reach to God and his kingdom, to true righteousness, to the blessedness of the life to come, but bear their relation and reference to the present life and are in some sense contained within its bounds. By heavenly things I mean the pure knowledge of God, the rule of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom. To the former kind belong civil polity, household management, all the mechanical arts, and the liberal disciplines. To the latter belong the knowledge of God and of the divine will, and the rule for forming our life according to it. Concerning the first, it must be confessed thus: since man is by nature a social animal, he is by natural instinct inclined also to cherish and preserve that society. We accordingly see that there are universal impressions of a certain civil fairness and order in the minds of all men. Hence it comes to pass that no one is found who does not understand that any society of men ought to be held together by laws, and who does not embrace in his mind the principles of those laws. Hence that perpetual consent to laws, both of all nations and of individual mortals, since the seeds of them are implanted in all without a teacher or a lawgiver. 
I do not pause over the dissensions and conflicts that presently arise — when some, like thieves and robbers, desire all right and law overturned, the bars of statutes broken open, and lust alone to rage in place of right; while others (a vice more than common) think that unjust which others sanction as just, and contend on the contrary that praiseworthy which others forbid. For the former do not hate laws because they are ignorant that they are good and holy; but, raging with headlong lust, they fight against manifest reason, and, what they approve in the understanding of the mind, they abhor according to their own lust. The latter sort of contention is not such as to dissolve that first conception of fairness; for while men dispute among themselves over the heads of laws, they agree in a certain common sum of fairness. In this, indeed, the weakness of the human mind is convicted, which, even while it seems to follow the path, limps and wavers. Yet this remains: that some seed of political order has been sprinkled in all. And this is ample proof that in the constitution of this life no man is destitute of the light of reason.
2.14.
There follow the arts, both liberal and manual, in the learning of which — since a certain aptitude is implanted in all of us — the force of human acumen likewise appears. Although not all men are fit to learn every art, yet it is a sure enough mark of common energy that scarcely anyone is found who does not exert some discernment in one art or another. Nor is there only the energy and facility for learning, but also for devising something new in each art, or for amplifying and refining what one has learned from a predecessor. This wrongly drove Plato to teach that such apprehension is nothing other than recollection; but it rightly compels us to confess that the principle of it is implanted in the human mind. These proofs, then, plainly testify that a universal grasp of reason and understanding is given by nature to men. Yet this good is so universal that each man for himself ought to recognise in it the special grace of God. To this gratitude the very Author of nature abundantly rouses us, when he creates fools — in whom he shows with what gifts the soul of man would be endowed had it not been filled with his light. What is thus naturally given to all is altogether his free gift of bounty toward each. As for the invention of the arts themselves, or their methodical transmission, or a deeper and more excellent knowledge of them (which belongs only to a few) — this is not indeed a solid proof of common discernment; yet because it falls indifferently to the godly and the ungodly, it is rightly numbered among the natural gifts.
2.15.
Whenever, therefore, we meet in profane authors with that admirable light of truth which shines forth in them, let us be reminded that the mind of man, however fallen and perverted from its first integrity, is yet still clothed and adorned with God’s excellent gifts. If we reckon that the Spirit of God is the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it appears, unless we wish to be insulting toward the Spirit of God; for the gifts of the Spirit cannot be undervalued without contempt and reproach toward him. And what then? Shall we deny that truth shone upon the ancient jurists who handed down civil order and discipline with such fairness? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind, both in their exquisite contemplation of nature and in their skilful description of it? Shall we say that those lacked mind who, by establishing the art of discourse, taught us to speak with reason? Shall we say that those were mad who, by developing medicine, spent their industry upon our behalf? What of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we think them the ravings of madmen? Nay, we shall not be able even to read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration; and we shall admire them, because we shall be compelled to acknowledge them excellent, as indeed they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or excellent which we do not recognise as proceeding from God? Let us be ashamed of such great ingratitude — into which the heathen poets did not fall, who confessed that philosophy, and laws, and all good arts were the inventions of the gods. Since, therefore, it is plain that these men, whom Scripture calls natural men, were so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of lower things, let us learn by such examples how many good things the Lord has left to human nature, even after it has been stripped of the true good.
2.16.
Yet let us not meanwhile forget that these are the most excellent gifts of the divine Spirit, which he dispenses to whom he will for the common good of mankind. For if it was needful that the understanding and skill required for the construction of the tabernacle be instilled into Bezaleel and Aholiab by the Spirit of God [Exod. 31:2; 35:30], it is no wonder if the knowledge of those things which are most excellent in human life is said to be communicated to us through the Spirit of God. Nor is there any reason for anyone to ask, what fellowship the ungodly have with the Spirit, who are utterly estranged from God. For when it is said that the Spirit of God dwells in the faithful alone, this is to be understood of the Spirit of sanctification, through whom we are consecrated to God himself as temples. Yet none the less does he, by the power of the same Spirit, fill, move, and quicken all things — and that according to the property of each kind, which he assigned to it by the law of creation. But if the Lord has willed that we be helped by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, logic, mathematics, and other disciplines of that kind, let us use it; lest, if we neglect the gifts of God freely offered in them, we pay the just penalty of our sloth. Yet, lest anyone think man very blessed because such energy for grasping truth is granted to him under the elements of this world, it must at the same time be added that this whole power of understanding, and the understanding which follows from it, is a thing fleeting and evanescent before God where the solid foundation of truth is not beneath it. For Augustine teaches most truly (and to him, as we have said, the Master of the Sentences and the Schoolmen were compelled to subscribe) that as the gratuitous gifts were stripped from man after the fall, so these natural gifts which remained were corrupted — not as though they could be defiled in themselves, in so far as they proceed from God, but because to polluted man they ceased to be pure, lest he should win any praise from them.
2.17.
Let this be the sum: that throughout the whole human race we perceive that reason, peculiar to our nature, distinguishes us from the brute animals — even as they themselves differ from inanimate things by sense. For the fact that some are born fools or stupid does not obscure the general grace of God; rather, by such a spectacle we are reminded that what is left to us ought rightly to be ascribed to God’s indulgence: for had he not spared us, our defection would have dragged the ruin of our whole nature along with it. As for the fact that some excel in acumen, others surpass in judgement, others have a quicker mind for learning this or that art — in this variety God commends his grace to us, lest anyone claim as his own what flows from his mere liberality. For whence is one more excellent than another, if not that in the common nature there should shine forth the special grace of God, which, passing many by, proclaims itself bound to none? Add that God instils particular impulses according to each man’s calling, of which many examples occur in the book of Judges, where it is said that the Spirit of the Lord clothed those whom he called to govern the people [Judg. 6:34]. In short, in each outstanding deed there is a special instinct. By this reason there followed Saul those valiant men whose hearts God had touched. And when his inauguration into the kingdom is foretold, Samuel speaks thus: The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt be turned into another man [1 Sam. 10:6]. And this is extended to the whole course of his rule, as is afterwards related of David, that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him from that day forward [1 Sam. 16:13]. But the same is taught elsewhere with respect to particular impulses. Indeed even in Homer men are said to be endowed with talent not only as Jupiter has distributed it to each, but οἶον ἐπʼ ἦμαρ ἄγῃσι — “such as he leads them on for the day” [Odyssey 18]. And experience certainly shows, when those most ingenious and skilful often stand astonished and at a loss, that the minds of men are in the hand and choice of God, so that he rules them at every moment: by which reason he is said to take away the understanding of the prudent, that they may wander in trackless places [Ps. 107:40]. Nevertheless, in this very diversity we still perceive some surviving marks of the image of God, which distinguish the whole human race from the other creatures.
2.18.
It must now be set forth what human reason discerns when it comes to the kingdom of God and that spiritual discernment — which consists chiefly in three things: to know God; to know his fatherly favour toward us, in which our salvation consists; and the manner of forming our life according to the rule of the law. In the first two, and most properly in the second, those who are most ingenious among men are blinder than moles. I do not, indeed, deny that here and there in the philosophers there are read concerning God some things shrewdly and aptly said; but such as ever savour of a giddy imagination. The Lord, as has been said above, granted them a slight taste of his divinity, that they might not pretend ignorance as a cloak for impiety; and at times he drove them to utter certain things by the confession of which they themselves might be convicted. But they saw what they saw in such a way that by such a glimpse they were not in the least directed toward the truth, much less did they reach it — just as a traveller standing in the middle of a field sees the flash of nocturnal lightning far and wide for a moment, but with so fleeting a view that he is swallowed up by the darkness of night before he can move a foot; so far is it from him to be led into the way by such help. Furthermore, those drops of truth with which they sprinkle their books, as it were by chance, with how many and how monstrous lies are they fouled? In short, that certainty of God’s benevolence toward us (without which the mind of man must be filled with measureless confusion) they never so much as scented. Toward this truth, then, human reason neither approaches, nor strives, nor aims — to understand who is the true God, and what manner of God he wills to be toward us.
2.19.
But because, drunk with a false opinion of our own discernment, we let ourselves be persuaded only with the greatest difficulty that reason in divine things is wholly blind and stupid, it will be better, I think, to prove this from the testimonies of Scripture than by arguments. This John teaches most beautifully in that passage which I cited a little above, when he writes that in God was life from the beginning, and the life was the light of men; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not [John 1:4–5]. He indicates indeed that the soul of man is irradiated by the brightness of the divine light, so that it is never plainly destitute even of some small flame, or at least of a spark; yet that by this illumination it does not comprehend God. Why so? Because its acumen, as regards the knowledge of God, is sheer darkness. For when the Spirit calls men darkness, he at once strips them of every faculty of spiritual understanding. Wherefore he affirms that the faithful, who embrace Christ, are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [John 1:13]. As though he said: flesh is not capable of so sublime a wisdom as to receive God and the things of God, unless it be illumined by the Spirit of God. Even as Christ testified that it was a special revelation of the Father that he should be acknowledged by Peter [Matt. 16:17].
2.20.

If we were persuaded — as ought to be beyond controversy — that our nature lacks whatever the heavenly Father confers upon his elect through the Spirit of regeneration, here there would be no ground for hesitating. For thus speaks the faithful people in the Prophet: For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light [Ps. 36:9]. The Apostle testifies the same, when he says that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. 12:3]. And John the Baptist, seeing the astonishment of his disciples, exclaims that a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from above [John 3:27]. That by “gift” he understands a special illumination, not a common endowment of nature, is plain from this: that after so many words by which he had commended Christ to his disciples, he laments that he has accomplished nothing. I see, he says, that words are nothing toward steeping the minds of men in divine things, unless the Lord gives understanding through his Spirit. Indeed Moses, while reproaching the people with their forgetfulness, at the same time notes that they cannot be wise in the mysteries of God except by his gift. Your eyes have seen those signs and great wonders, he says; yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear [Deut. 29:2, 4]. What more would he express, if he called us blocks in the considering of God’s works? Hence the Lord, through the Prophet, promises as a mark of singular grace that he will give the Israelites a heart, that he may be known by them [Jer. 24:7] — plainly intimating that the mind of man is wise in spiritual things only so far as it has been enlightened by him.

This also Christ confirmed clearly with his own voice, when he said that no man can come to him, except it were given unto him of his Father [John 6:44]. What? Is he not himself the living image of the Father, in which the whole splendour of his glory is expressed to us? Therefore he could not better show what our faculty for knowing God is, than when he denies that we have eyes to discern his image, though it is set forth so openly. What? Did he not descend to earth for this very end, to disclose the Father’s will to men? Did he not faithfully discharge his embassy? So indeed it is; but nothing is effected by his preaching, unless the inward teacher, the Spirit, opens the way to the soul. Therefore none come to him but those who have heard and learned of the Father. And what is this manner of learning and hearing? It is where the Spirit, by a wonderful and singular power, forms the ears to hear and the minds to understand. And lest this seem new, he cites the prophecy of Isaiah, where, while promising the restoration of the Church, he teaches that those who are gathered to salvation shall be taught of God [Isa. 54:13]. If God there foretells something peculiar concerning his elect, it is plain that he does not speak of that kind of doctrine which is common even to the ungodly and profane. It remains, then, that we understand that entrance into the kingdom of God lies open to none but him for whom the Holy Spirit, by his illumination, has made a new mind.

But most clearly of all, Paul — having entered upon this discussion expressly, and after condemning the whole wisdom of men as folly and vanity, indeed after utterly emptying it — at length concludes thus: that the natural man cannot perceive the things of the Spirit of God: they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned [1 Cor. 2:14]. Whom does he call natural? Him, surely, who leans upon the light of nature. He, I say, comprehends nothing in the spiritual mysteries of God. Why so? Is it because through sloth he neglects them? Nay, even though he strive, he can do nothing: because, namely, they are spiritually discerned. What does this signify? That, being utterly hidden from human discernment, they are disclosed through the revelation of the Spirit alone — so that they are reckoned folly wherever the Spirit of God does not shine. A little before, he had lifted the things which God hath prepared for them that love him above the capacity of eyes, ears, and minds; indeed he had testified that human wisdom is, as it were, a kind of veil, by which the mind is hindered from beholding God. What would we have? The Apostle declares that God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world [1 Cor. 1:20]; and shall we, forsooth, attribute to it an acumen by which it may penetrate to God and the inner sanctuary of the heavenly kingdom? Far be such madness from us.
2.21.

Accordingly, what he here takes away from men, he elsewhere ascribes to God alone in prayer. May the God and Father of glory, he says, give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation [Eph. 1:17]. You hear now that all wisdom and revelation is the gift of God. What follows next? The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Surely, if they need a new revelation, of themselves they are blind. Then follows: that ye may know what is the hope of your calling, etc. He confesses, therefore, that the minds of men are not capable of so great an understanding as to know their own calling.

Nor let some Pelagian prattle here that God relieves this dullness or rudeness by directing man’s intellect through the doctrine of his word to that place which, without a guide, it could not reach. For David had the Law, in which was comprehended whatever wisdom can be desired; yet not content with that, he prays that his eyes may be unveiled, that he may consider the mysteries of that very Law [Ps. 119:18]. By this manner of speaking he surely intimates that the sun rises upon the earth when the word of God shines forth to men; but that they gain little from it until he himself either gives or opens their eyes — he who is for this reason called the Father of lights [Jas. 1:17], because wherever he does not shine by his Spirit, all things are seized by darkness. So also the Apostles had been duly and abundantly taught by the best of masters; yet if they did not need the Spirit of truth to instruct their minds in that very doctrine which they had heard before [John 14:26], they would not have been commanded to wait for him. If, in asking anything of God, we confess that we lack it, and he, in promising it, convicts us of our poverty — then let no one now hesitate to confess that he avails to understand the mysteries of God only so far as he has been illumined by his grace. He who attributes more understanding to himself is the blinder, in that he does not acknowledge his own blindness.
2.22.
There remains the third part of our division: the knowledge of the rule by which life is rightly ordered — what we may truly call the knowledge of the works of righteousness. Here the human mind seems to be somewhat sharper than in the matters above. For the Apostle testifies: that the Gentiles, which have not the Law, while they do the works of the Law, are a Law unto themselves, and show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another, before the judgement of God [Rom. 2:14–15]. If the Gentiles have the righteousness of the Law naturally graven on their minds, surely we shall not say that they are wholly blind as to the conduct of life. And nothing is more common than the assertion that, by the natural law (of which the Apostle is speaking there), man is sufficiently instructed unto a right rule of life. But let us weigh to what end this knowledge of the Law was implanted in men; then it will at once appear how far it leads them toward the goal of reason and truth. This too is clear from Paul’s words, if one observes their disposition. He had said a little before that those who have sinned in the Law shall be judged by the Law; those who have sinned without the Law shall perish without the Law. Because this might seem absurd — that the Gentiles should perish without any preceding judgement — he immediately adds that their conscience stands to them in place of the Law, and therefore suffices for their just condemnation. The end, then, of the natural law is that man may be rendered inexcusable. Nor will it be ill defined in this way: that it is an apprehension of the conscience, sufficiently discerning between just and unjust, so as to take from men the pretext of ignorance, since they are convicted by their own testimony. Such is man’s indulgence toward himself that, in perpetrating evils, he willingly turns his mind away, so far as he can, from the sense of sin. By this reason Plato seems to have been driven to suppose that none sin but through ignorance [in the Protagoras]. That would have been fitly said by him, if human hypocrisy availed so far in covering vices that the mind bore no witness against itself before God. But since the sinner, while fleeing the judgement of good and evil stamped upon him, is again and again dragged back to it, and is not so permitted to wink that he is not compelled, willing or unwilling, sometimes to open his eyes — it is falsely said that he sins through ignorance alone.
2.23.

2.24.

But when you hear of a universal judgement in discerning good and evil, do not suppose it to be everywhere sound and whole. For if the hearts of men are imbued with the distinction of just and unjust only to this end — that they may have no pretext of ignorance — it is by no means necessary that the truth be seen in every particular; it is more than sufficient to understand so far as to leave no room for evasion, so that even now, convicted by the witness of conscience, they begin to tremble at the tribunal of God. And if we wish to measure our reason against the Law of God — which is the pattern of perfect righteousness — we shall find how blind it is in many respects. Certainly as to the chief things of the first table, it falls utterly short: such as trust in God, the ascribing to him of the praise of virtue and righteousness, the invocation of his name, and the true sabbath. What soul, relying on natural sense, has ever so much as caught the scent that in these and like things the lawful worship of God is to be found? For when ungodly men would worship God, however many times they are called back from their empty trifles, they always relapse into them. They do indeed deny that sacrifices please God unless accompanied by sincerity of mind — by which they testify that they have some conception of the spiritual worship of God; yet they immediately corrupt it with false inventions. For whatever the Law prescribes concerning it can never be persuaded to be true among them. Shall I say that the mind excels in discernment which is able neither to be wise of itself, nor to give heed to admonitions?

In the precepts of the second table the mind has somewhat more understanding — as being more nearly related to the preservation of civil society among men. Yet here too it is found to suffer lapses; for to the most excellent minds it seems utterly absurd to endure unjust and excessively overbearing rule, if it can by any means be thrown off. Nor is human reason’s judgement otherwise than that it is the mark of a servile and abject spirit to bear it patiently; and again, of an honourable and generous heart to shake it off. Nor do the philosophers reckon the avenging of wrongs a vice. But the Lord, condemning this excessive high-mindedness, prescribes to his own people that patience which is held infamous among men.

Moreover, as regards the whole observance of the Law, the discernment of concupiscence altogether escapes our perception. For the natural man cannot be brought to acknowledge the diseases of his own desires. The light of nature is smothered before it so much as approaches the first entry of this abyss. For when the philosophers censure as vices the immoderate motions of the soul, they have in mind those which break out and manifest themselves by grosser signs; those depraved desires which softly titillate the mind they reckon as nothing.
2.25.

Wherefore, as Plato was justly rebuked above for imputing all sins to ignorance, so also the opinion of those must be rejected who teach that deliberate malice and wickedness intervene in all sins. For we find by too much experience how often we fall with good intention. Our reason is overwhelmed by so many forms of delusion, is liable to so many errors, stumbles against so many obstacles, is entangled in so many straits, that it is most commonly far from a sure direction. And how worthless it is before the Lord in all parts of life, Paul shows when he denies that we are sufficient so much as to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves [2 Cor. 3:5]. He does not speak of the will or affection; but this too he takes from us — that we should suppose it possible for us even to conceive how anything ought rightly to be done. Is all diligence, discernment, understanding, and care so depraved that it can devise or meditate nothing right before the Lord? To us, indeed, who grudgingly suffer ourselves to be stripped of the acumen of reason (which we count our most precious endowment), this seems far too harsh. But to the Holy Spirit it is most just — he who knows that all the thoughts of the wise are vain, and who clearly declares that every imagination of the human heart is only evil [Ps. 94:11; Gen. 6:5; 8:21]. If whatever our mind conceives, turns over, purposes, and attempts is always evil, how shall it occur to us to devise what is pleasing to God, to whom alone holiness and righteousness are acceptable? Thus it is plain that our reason, wherever it turns, is wretchedly subject to vanity. David was conscious of this weakness when he asked that understanding be given him rightly to learn the commandments of the Lord [Ps. 119:34]; for in desiring a new one to be granted him, he implies that his own mind is by no means sufficient. Nor does he do this once only: in that one Psalm he repeats the same petition nearly ten times — by which repetition he intimates under what pressing necessity he is urged to ask. And what he asks for himself alone, Paul is accustomed to pray for the churches in common: We cease not to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of God [Col. 1:9–10; cf. Phil. 1:4]. And as often as he makes this a gift of God, let us remember that he thereby testifies at the same time that it does not lie within the power of man.

Now Augustine so fully acknowledged this defect of reason in understanding the things of God that he judges the grace of illumination no less necessary to minds than the light of the sun to eyes. Nor content with that, he adds a correction: that we ourselves open our eyes to behold the light, but the eyes of the mind, unless they are opened by the Lord, remain shut [On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, Bk. 2, ch. 5]. Nor does Scripture teach that our minds are illumined for a single day and thereafter see of themselves; for what I lately cited from Paul pertains to continual progress and increase. And this David expresses plainly in these words: With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments [Ps. 119:10]. For though he had been regenerate and had advanced more than commonly in true godliness, he yet confesses that he needs constant direction at every moment, lest he decline from the knowledge with which he is endowed. So elsewhere he asks that the right spirit which he had lost by his own fault be renewed within him [Ps. 51:12] — since it belongs to the same God who gave it at the first, to restore to us what for a time has been taken away.
2.26.
The will is now to be examined, in which chiefly the liberty of choice consists; since the power of choosing was shown above to belong rather to the will than to the intellect. First, lest anything seem to bear upon the rectitude of the human will from what has been handed down by the philosophers and received by common consent — that all things by natural instinct desire the good — let us note that the power of free will is not to be considered in an appetite of this kind, which proceeds rather from the inclination of being itself than from the deliberation of the mind. For even the schoolmen confess that there is no action of free will except when reason turns itself to opposite courses; by which they mean that the object of the appetite must be such as is subject to choice, and that deliberation must go before to pave the way for choice. And indeed, if you consider what manner of thing this natural desire of the good in man is, you will find it common to him with the beasts. For they too wish their own welfare; and where the appearance of good that moves the senses presents itself, they follow it. But man, befitting the excellence of his immortal nature, does not by reason choose what is truly good for himself in order to pursue it with zeal; he does not bring reason to counsel, nor apply his mind, but, without reason, without counsel, follows the inclination of nature like a beast. This, then, has nothing to do with the liberty of the will — whether man is carried by the sense of nature to desire the good; what is required is rather that he judge the good by right reason, choose it once known, and pursue it once chosen. And lest any scruple remain, a double fallacy must be noted. For this appetite is not properly a motion of the will, but a natural inclination; and the good here spoken of is not called the good of virtue or righteousness, but of condition — that is, that man may fare well. Finally, however much man may desire to attain what is good, it does not follow that he does so; just as there is no one to whom eternal blessedness is not pleasing, yet to it no one aspires except by the impulse of the Spirit. Since, then, this natural desire in men of faring well does nothing to prove the liberty of the will — no more, indeed, than the inclination found even in metals and stones, tending toward the perfection of their own being — let us consider, in other respects, whether the will is so utterly vitiated and corrupted in every part that it can generate nothing but evil, or whether it retains some small portion unharmed, from which good desires may spring.
2.27.

Those who ascribe to the first grace of God the fact that we will effectively seem, on the other hand, to imply that there is in the soul some faculty of its own accord to aspire to the good — but a weaker one, unable to rise into a full affection or to stir up an endeavour. Nor is there any doubt that this opinion, taken from Origen and certain of the ancients, has been commonly embraced by the schoolmen, since they are accustomed to consider man in his “pure naturals,” as they call it — such as the Apostle describes in these words: For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not [Rom. 7:15, 19]. But by this means the whole argument which Paul pursues there is wrongly turned upside down. For he is treating of the Christian struggle (which he touches more briefly in Galatians [Gal. 5:17]) which believers continually feel within themselves in the conflict of flesh and spirit. Now the Spirit is not from nature but from regeneration. That the Apostle speaks of the regenerate is plain from this: that when he had said no good dwelt in him, he immediately adds the explanation, that he means this of his flesh. And so he denies that it is he himself who does the evil, but sin dwelling in him. What does this correction mean — in me, that is, in my flesh? It is as though he spoke thus: no good dwells in me of myself, for in my flesh nothing good is to be found. Hence follows that kind of excuse: it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me — which fits the regenerate alone, who in the chief part of their soul tend toward the good. Indeed the conclusion that follows declares all this clearly. I delight, he says, in the law after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind [Rom. 7:22–23]. Who has such a conflict within himself, except one who, regenerate by the Spirit of God, still carries about with him the remnants of his flesh? Accordingly Augustine, having once supposed that this discourse was spoken of man’s nature, retracted his own interpretation as false and ill-fitting [To Boniface, Bk. 1, ch. 10, and in his Retractations]. And indeed, if we grant that men without grace have some movements toward the good, however small, what shall we answer to the Apostle, who denies that we are fit so much as to think anything [2 Cor. 3:5]? What to the Lord, declaring through Moses that every imagination of the human heart is only evil [Gen. 8:21]? Since, then, they have stumbled upon the false sense of a single passage, there is no reason we should linger over their opinion. Rather let that word of Christ stand: that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin [John 8:34]. We are all sinners by nature; therefore we are held under the yoke of sin. But if the whole man lies subject to the dominion of sin, then certainly the will itself, which is its chief seat, must be bound with the closest fetters.

Nor indeed would that word of Paul’s hold true — that it is God who worketh in us both to will [Phil. 2:13] — if any will went before the grace of the Spirit. Let everything, then, that many have trifled about preparation give way. For although believers sometimes ask that a heart be formed in them to obey the Law of God (as David does in many places), yet it must be noted that this very desire to pray is also from God — which may be gathered from his own words; for when he prays that a clean heart be created in him [Ps. 51:10], he certainly does not claim for himself the beginning of that creation. Let this saying of Augustine’s, therefore, rather prevail with us: “God goes before thee in all things; do thou also at some time go before his wrath. How? Confess that thou hast all these things from God; that whatever good thou hast is from him; whatever evil, from thyself.” And a little after: “Nothing is ours but sin” [On the Words of the Apostle, Sermon 10].
Chapter 3.
That nothing but what is damnable proceeds from man’s corrupted nature.
3.1.

But man cannot be better known in both parts of his soul than if he comes forth before us with those titles by which Scripture brands him. He is thus painted whole by these words of Christ: That which is born of the flesh is flesh [John 3:6] — by which (as is easy to show) he is convicted of being a most wretched creature. For the affection of the flesh, by the Apostle’s testimony, is death: since it is enmity against God, and therefore is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be [Rom. 8:6–7]. Is the flesh so perverse, then, that in its whole affection it exercises hostility against God? That it cannot agree with the righteousness of the divine Law? That, in short, it can bring forth nothing but the matter of death? Now suppose that in man’s nature there is nothing but flesh — and from that, draw forth, if you can, anything good.

But the word flesh, it is said, pertains only to the sensual part, not to the higher part of the soul. This is abundantly refuted by the words both of Christ and of the Apostle. The Lord’s argument is that man must be born again, because he is flesh [John 3:6]. He does not command rebirth according to the body. But the soul is not born again if some portion of it is merely corrected; it is born again only when the whole is renewed. And this is confirmed by the antithesis set down in both passages; for the Spirit is so opposed to the flesh that nothing intermediate is left. Whatever in man, then, is not spiritual is, by that very reasoning, called fleshly. But we have nothing of the Spirit except through regeneration. Whatever, therefore, we have from nature is flesh.

But if there could be any further doubt on this matter, it is removed for us by Paul: where, having described the old man, whom he had said to be corrupted by the lusts of error, he bids us be renewed in the spirit of our mind [Eph. 4:23]. You see that he places unlawful and depraved desires not in the sensitive part alone, but in the very mind itself; and therefore requires its renewal. And indeed he had a little before painted that very image of human nature which showed us to be corrupted and perverse in no part less than the rest. For when he writes that all the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart [Eph. 4:17–18] — there is no doubt that this applies to all whom the Lord has not yet reformed to the rectitude of his wisdom and his righteousness alike. This is made still clearer by the comparison immediately added, where he reminds the faithful that they have not so learned Christ. For from these words we gather that the grace of Christ is the sole remedy by which we are freed from that blindness and from the evils that follow upon it. For Isaiah likewise prophesied thus of the kingdom of Christ, promising that the Lord would be to his Church an everlasting light — while meanwhile darkness should cover the earth, and gross darkness the people [Isa. 60:2]. Since he testifies that the light of God shall arise in the Church alone, outside the Church he certainly leaves nothing but darkness and blindness.

I will not recount one by one the passages found everywhere, especially in the Psalms and the Prophets, concerning man’s vanity. It is a great thing that David writes: that if he be weighed in the balance with vanity, he would prove lighter than vanity itself [Ps. 62:9]. His mind is run through with a heavy weapon, when all the thoughts that proceed from it are mocked as foolish, frivolous, mad, and perverse.
3.2.

No lighter is the condemnation of the heart, when it is called deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked [Jer. 17:9]. But as I study brevity, I shall be content with one passage only — which shall serve, however, as the clearest of mirrors in which we may behold the whole image of our nature. For the Apostle, when he would cast down the arrogance of mankind, presses these testimonies: There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes [Rom. 3:10–18; Isa. 59:7].

With these thunderbolts he assails not certain men, but the whole race of the sons of Adam. Nor does he declaim against depraved manners of one age or another; he arraigns the perpetual corruption of nature. For his purpose in that place is not simply to rebuke men that they may repent, but rather to teach that all are overwhelmed by an inescapable calamity from which they cannot emerge unless they are rescued by the mercy of God. And because this could not be proven unless it were first established that nature is ruined and undone, he brought forward these testimonies, by which our nature is convicted of being more than lost. Let it stand, therefore, that men are such as here described not merely by the fault of depraved habit, but by the depravity of nature also; since the Apostle’s argument cannot otherwise hold — that there is no salvation for man save from the mercy of the Lord, because in himself he is ruined and past hope.

I shall not labour here to approve the application of these testimonies, lest they seem to anyone to be used out of place. I shall proceed as though these things were first spoken by Paul, not taken from the Prophets. At the outset he strips man of righteousness — that is, of integrity and purity — then of understanding. The defect of understanding he convicts by apostasy from God: to seek after God is the first step of wisdom; and this must of necessity befall those who have fallen away from God. He adds that all have gone aside and are become as it were rotten; that there is none who doeth good. Then he sets forth the crimes with which those who are once dissolved into wickedness defile their several members. Finally, he testifies that they are void of the fear of God, by the rule of which our steps ought to have been guided. If these are the hereditary endowments of the human race, it is in vain to seek anything good in our nature. I confess indeed that not all these crimes emerge in every man; yet it cannot be denied that this hydra lurks in the breast of each. For as a body, while it harbours within itself the cause and matter of disease, though the pain does not yet burn, shall not be called healthy — so neither shall the soul, while it teems with such diseases of vice, be reckoned sound; though the comparison does not hold perfectly in every point. For in a body, however diseased, some vigour of life remains; but the soul, plunged into that deadly gulf, not only labours under its vices, but is utterly empty of all good.
3.3.

Very nearly the same question that was resolved before rises up again fresh. For in every age there have been some who, guided by nature, were bent upon virtue their whole life long. Nor do I pause over the fact that many lapses may be noted in their conduct; by their very zeal for honesty they gave proof that there was some measure of purity in their nature. What worth such virtues have before God — though we shall treat this more fully when we come to the merit of works — must nonetheless be said here as well, so far as is necessary for the explanation of the present argument. These examples, then, seem to warn us against reckoning man’s nature as wholly depraved; seeing that by its impulse certain men have not only excelled in remarkable deeds, but have conducted themselves with great honesty through the whole course of their lives.

But here we must remember that amid that corruption of nature there is some place for the grace of God — not a grace that cleanses it, but one that restrains it from within. For if the Lord were to permit the minds of all men to break out unchecked into whatever lusts they pleased, there would be no doubt that every man would prove by his own deeds how perfectly all the evils with which Paul condemns the whole of nature apply to himself [Ps. 14:3]. For what of it? Would you exempt from that company those whose feet are swift to shed blood, whose hands are defiled with rapine and murder, whose throats are like open sepulchres, whose tongues are deceitful, whose lips are venomous [Rom. 3:13], whose works are worthless, iniquitous, rotten, and deadly — whose minds are without God, whose inward parts are all depravity, whose eyes are set for ambush, whose spirits are lifted up to insult, and all whose members are fitted together for endless crimes? If every soul is liable to such monstrous things — as the Apostle boldly declares — we see plainly what would come to pass if the Lord were to allow human lust to range at will according to its own inclination. There is no raging beast that rushes forward with such headlong force; there is no river, however swift and violent, whose flooding is so impetuous. In his elect, the Lord heals these diseases by the means we shall shortly set forth; in others, he only restrains them by laying on a bridle, preventing them from boiling over so far as he sees it to be expedient for the preservation of the whole creation. Hence some are held back by shame, others by fear of the laws, from breaking out into many kinds of baseness — however greatly they fail to conceal their impurity for the most part. Others, because they judge an honest manner of life to be profitable, aspire toward it after their fashion. Others rise above the common sort, in order by their own greatness to hold others to their duty. Thus by his providence God restrains the perversity of nature from breaking forth into act — but does not cleanse it within.
3.4.

Yet the scruple is not yet resolved. Either we must make Camillus the equal of Catiline — which does not hold — or in Camillus we shall have an example that nature, if diligently cultivated, is not entirely void of goodness. I will grant that the excellent endowments that were in Camillus were gifts of God, and commendable when considered in themselves; but in what sense shall they stand as proofs of natural uprightness in him? Must we not return to the mind and pursue this reasoning? — as Augustine argues in Bk. 4 Against Julian. If a natural man excelled in such integrity of conduct, then nature is not without the capacity for the pursuit of virtue. But what if the mind were depraved and crooked, pursuing anything sooner than righteousness? And such it must have been, if you grant him to be that natural man. What power toward good in human nature will you then commend to me, if in the very height of the appearance of integrity it is found always to be carried toward corruption? Therefore, as you would not commend a man for virtue whose vices impose under the image of virtue, so do not ascribe to the human will the faculty of seeking the right, so long as it remains fixed in its own perversity.

Though this is the most certain and most ready resolution of this question: that these are not common endowments of nature, but special graces of God, which he dispenses variously and in a certain measure to men who are otherwise profane. By this reasoning we do not scruple in ordinary speech to call one man well-born and another of depraved nature; yet we do not cease to include both under the universal condition of human depravity, but indicate what special grace the Lord has bestowed upon the one, with which he did not see fit to honour the other.

Wishing to set Saul over the kingdom, he formed him as it were a new man [1 Sam. 10:6]; and this is the reason why Plato, alluding to the Homeric fable, says that the sons of kings are born marked with some singular token — because God, willing to provide for the human race, often equips those destined for rule with a heroic nature; and from this workshop proceeded whatever great commanders the histories celebrate. The same judgement is to be formed of private men. But because the most excellent among them were always driven by their ambition — by which taint all virtues are so defiled as to lose all grace before God — whatever appears praiseworthy in profane men is to be reckoned as nothing. Add that the chief part of righteousness is lacking where there is no zeal for glorifying God, of which all are empty whom he has not regenerated by his Spirit. Nor is it without cause that Isaiah says the spirit of the fear of the Lord rests upon Christ [Isa. 11:3] — teaching us that all who are strangers to Christ are likewise without the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom [Ps. 111:10]. As for those virtues which deceive us with their empty appearance, in the civil court and in common human estimation they shall have their praise; but before the heavenly tribunal they shall be of no worth toward the meriting of righteousness.
3.5.

The will, therefore, being held bound by the servitude of sin, cannot so much as move itself toward the good, much less apply itself to it; for such a motion is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is wholly ascribed to the grace of God. As Jeremiah prays to the Lord to convert him, if he would have him converted [Jer. 31:18]. Whence the Prophet in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the faithful people, says he is redeemed from the hand of him that was stronger — plainly signifying how close are the fetters that bind the sinner, so long as, forsaken by the Lord, he lies under the yoke of the devil. The will, nevertheless, remains — a will that, by the most eager affection, both inclines and hastens to sin; for man was not deprived of will when he gave himself over to this necessity, but of soundness of will. Nor does Bernard speak unfitly, who teaches that to will belongs to us all; but to will the good is an advance, to will the evil a defect. Therefore simply to will belongs to man; to will ill, to corrupted nature; to will well, to grace.

Now, that I say the will, having renounced its liberty, is drawn or led by necessity into evil — if this seem a harsh saying to anyone, it is strange, since it contains nothing absurd, nor is it alien from the usage of the saints. But it offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. Yet if someone should ask them, Is not God necessarily good? Is not the devil necessarily evil? — what would they answer? For the goodness of God is so bound up with his divinity that it is no more necessary for him to be God than to be good. And the devil, by his fall, is so estranged from all fellowship with good that he can do nothing but evil. But if some blasphemer should snarl that little praise is owed to God for a goodness which he is compelled to maintain — will not the answer be ready, that it is by his immeasurable goodness, not by violent compulsion, that he is unable to do evil? If, therefore, it does not hinder the free will of God in doing good that he must necessarily do good; if the devil, who can do nothing but evil, nevertheless sins willingly — who will say that man sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning? This necessity Augustine everywhere proclaims; and even when he was pressed by the spiteful cavil of Caelestius, he did not hesitate to affirm in these words: “By liberty it came to pass that man was with sin; but the penal corruption that followed turned liberty into necessity” [On the Perfection of Righteousness].

And as often as the matter arises, he does not hesitate to speak in this manner of the necessary servitude of sin [On Nature and Grace, and elsewhere]. Let the sum of this distinction, then, be observed: that man, as he is vitiated by the fall, sins willingly, not unwillingly, not by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of the heart, not by violent coercion; by the motion of his own lust, not by external force — yet by such depravity of nature he cannot be moved and driven except toward evil. If this is true, it is plainly expressed that he lies subject to the necessity of sinning.

Subscribing to Augustine, Bernard writes thus: “Among all creatures, man alone is free; and yet, sin intervening, he too suffers a certain violence — but from the will, not from nature, so that even thus he is not deprived of his inborn liberty. For what is voluntary is also free.” And a little after: “Thus, by some strange and evil means, the will itself, changed for the worse by sin, makes for itself a necessity; so that neither can the necessity, being voluntary, excuse the will, nor can the will, being enticed, exclude the necessity. For this necessity is in some sense voluntary.” Afterwards he says we are pressed under a yoke, yet none other than that of a kind of voluntary servitude: therefore as regards our servitude we are pitiable, as regards our will we are inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. At last he concludes: “Thus, by some wonderful and evil fashion, the soul is held under this voluntary and, as it were, freely-chosen necessity, both slave and free: slave by reason of the necessity; free by reason of the will; and, what is more wonderful and more wretched, guilty because free, and enslaved because guilty; and therefore enslaved because free” [Sermons on the Song of Songs, 81].

From this the reader will certainly recognize that I advance nothing new, but what Augustine long since brought forth from the consent of all the godly, and which was retained in the cloisters of the monks for nearly a thousand years afterwards. But Lombard, because he knew not how to distinguish necessity from compulsion, gave occasion to a pernicious error.
3.6.

It is worthwhile to consider, on the other side, what the remedy of divine grace is, by which the depravity of nature is corrected and healed. For since the Lord, in bringing help, bestows upon us what we lack, when it is established what his work in us is, our poverty on the other hand will at once become plain. When the Apostle tells the Philippians that he is confident that he which hath begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ [Phil. 1:6], there is no doubt that by the beginning of a good work he designates the very origin of conversion, which is in the will. God therefore begins the good work in us by arousing in our hearts the love, the desire, and the zeal for righteousness — or, to speak more properly, by bending, forming, and directing our hearts toward righteousness. He brings it to completion by confirming us unto perseverance. That no one may evade by saying that the good is merely begun by the Lord because the will, weak of itself, is assisted, the Spirit declares elsewhere what the will avails when left to itself: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes [Ezek. 36:26–27]. Who will say that the weakness of the human will is strengthened by help, so that it may effectively aspire to the choice of good, when the whole of it must be transformed and renewed? If there is any softness in a stone, which, aided from without, may be made more pliable so as to receive any bending — I will not deny that the heart of man is flexible to obey what is right, provided that what is imperfect in it is supplied by the grace of God. But if by this similitude he meant to show that nothing good will ever be wrung from our heart unless it becomes altogether another thing — let us not divide between him and ourselves what he claims for himself alone. If, then, a stone is transformed into flesh when God converts us to the pursuit of what is right, whatever belongs to our own will is abolished; and what succeeds in its place is wholly from God.

I say the will is abolished — not in so far as it is will, since in man’s conversion what belongs to his first nature remains whole; I say also that a new will is created — not that the will begins to exist, but that it is turned from evil to good. This I affirm to be entirely the work of God, since by the testimony of the same Apostle we are not sufficient even to think anything [2 Cor. 3:5]. Accordingly he teaches elsewhere that God not only helps the weak will, or corrects the depraved one, but works in us to will [Phil. 2:13]. From this it is easily gathered, as I have said, that whatever is good in the will is the work of grace alone. In which sense he says elsewhere that it is God which worketh all in all [1 Cor. 12:6]; for there he does not discourse of universal governance, but claims for God alone the praise of all the good things in which the faithful abound. And by saying all, he surely makes God the author of the spiritual life from beginning to end — which he had before taught in other words, saying that the faithful are of God in Christ [Eph. 1:1]; where he clearly commends that new creation by which all that belongs to common nature is abolished. For the antithesis between Adam and Christ is to be understood here, which he explains more clearly elsewhere, where he teaches that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them [Eph. 2:10]. For by this reasoning he means to prove that our salvation is gratuitous: because the beginning of all good is from the second creation which we obtain in Christ. Yet if there were even the smallest faculty in ourselves, there would be some portion of merit as well. But to empty us utterly, he reasons that we have merited nothing, because we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath prepared — by which words he again signifies that all the parts of good works, from the first motion, are the proper work of God. For this reason the Prophet, after saying in the Psalm that we are God’s workmanship, lest any division should be made, immediately adds: It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves [Ps. 100:3]. That he speaks of regeneration, which is the beginning of the spiritual life, is plain from the context, where there follows directly that we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. And we see that, not content with simply giving God the praise of our salvation, he expressly excludes us from all partnership — as if to say that not so much as the least portion remains to man in which he may glory, because the whole is from God.
3.7.

But perhaps there will be some who will concede that the will, of its own nature averse from good, is converted by the power of the Lord alone — yet in such a way that, having been prepared, it thereafter has its own part to play in acting. As Augustine teaches: that grace precedes every good work, and that the will accompanies but does not lead, follows but does not go before [Epistle to Boniface, 106]. This saying, not ill spoken by that holy man, Peter Lombard twists perversely to his own use. But I maintain that both in the words of the Prophet which I cited, and in other places, two things are clearly marked: that the Lord both corrects our depraved will, or rather abolishes it, and supplies a good one from himself. In so far as the will is preceded by grace, I will allow you to call it a follower; but since, once reformed, it is the Lord’s work, it is wrongly attributed to man that he obeys prevenient grace with a will that follows. Therefore Chrysostom wrote amiss, that neither grace without the will, nor the will without grace, can accomplish anything — as though grace did not also work the very will itself, as we lately saw from Paul. Nor indeed was it Augustine’s intention, when he called the human will the follower of grace, to assign to it some secondary part alongside grace in the good work. His only purpose was to refute Pelagius’s most vicious doctrine, which placed the first cause of salvation in man’s merit; and for the present cause it sufficed to contend that grace is prior to all merit. The further question, concerning the perpetual effect of grace, he meanwhile passed over — though he treats it admirably elsewhere. For when he says, several times, that the Lord goes before the unwilling, that he may will; and follows the willing, that he may not will in vain — he makes God the sole author of the good work.

Though his statements on this matter are too clear to require a long argument. “Men labour,” he says, “to find in our will something that is our own and not from God; and how it can be found, I know not” [On the Forgiveness of Sins, Bk. 2, ch. 18]. And in the first book Against Pelagius and Caelestius, where he interprets that saying of Christ, Every man that hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me [John 6:45]: “The will,” he says, “is so helped that it not only knows what is to be done, but also does what it has come to know. And so, when God teaches not by the letter of the Law but by the grace of the Spirit, he so teaches that what each man has learned he does not only see by knowing, but also desires by willing, and accomplishes by doing.”
3.8.

And since we are now turning upon the chief hinge of the matter, come, let us set before the reader the sum of the case, proven by a few of the plainest testimonies of Scripture only; and then — lest anyone charge us with wrongly wresting Scripture — let us show that the truth we maintain as drawn from Scripture is not without the testimony of that holy man (I mean Augustine). For I do not think it expedient to recount one by one, in order, all the passages from Scripture that might be adduced to confirm our position; it is enough that, from the choicest passages set forth, the way be paved for understanding all the rest that are read here and there. Nor, on the other hand, will it be untimely to make plain that I am not ill agreed with a man to whom the consent of the godly rightly ascribes the greatest authority.

Certainly it is clear, by a ready and sure reasoning, that the beginning of good is from no other source than God alone; for a will inclined toward good will not be found except in the elect. But the cause of election must be sought outside of men; from which it follows that a right will does not belong to man of himself, but flows from the same good pleasure by which we were elected before the creation of the world. There is added another reason, not unlike this: for since the beginning of willing and doing well is from faith, it must be seen whence faith itself comes. But since the whole of Scripture declares it to be the free gift of God, it follows that it is of mere grace when we begin to will the good, who are by nature inclined with our whole soul to evil.

Therefore when the Lord, in the conversion of his people, sets down these two things — that he will take away their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh — he openly testifies that what is of ourselves must be abolished in order that we may be converted to righteousness; and that whatever takes its place is from himself. Nor does he declare this in one place only. For he says in Jeremiah: I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever [Jer. 32:39]. A little after: I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me [Jer. 32:40]. Again in Ezekiel: I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh [Ezek. 11:19]. He could not more plainly claim for himself, and take from us, whatever is good and right in our will, than when he testifies that our conversion is the creation of a new spirit and a new heart. For it always follows, both that nothing good proceeds from our will until it has been reformed, and that after its reformation, in so far as it is good, it is from God, not from us.
3.9.

So also the prayers of the saints are found to be composed. Let the Lord incline our hearts unto him, said Solomon, that we may keep his commandments [1 Kings 8:58]. He shows the stubbornness of our heart, which naturally exults in rebellion against the divine Law, unless it be bent. The same is found in the Psalm: Incline my heart unto thy testimonies [Ps. 119:36]; for the antithesis must always be noted between the perverse motion of the heart, by which it is carried toward disobedience, and this correction, by which it is brought into subjection. And David, perceiving himself for a time bereft of directing grace, prays God to create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within him [Ps. 51:10] — does he not acknowledge that all the parts of his heart are full of impurity, and his spirit twisted with crooked depravity? And in calling the cleanness he craves a creation of God, does he not ascribe the whole of it to him? If anyone objects that the prayer itself is a mark of a godly and holy affection, the answer is ready: although David had already in some measure come to himself, he is nevertheless comparing his former state with that dreadful ruin he had experienced. Taking upon him, therefore, the person of a man estranged from God, he rightly asks to be given whatever God confers upon his elect in regeneration. Thus, like a dead man, he desires to be created anew, so that from a slave of Satan he may become an instrument of the Holy Spirit.

Truly the desires of our pride are strange and monstrous. The Lord requires nothing more strictly than that we keep his sabbath with the most reverent observance — that is, by resting from our own works; yet nothing is more grudgingly yielded by us than to bid farewell to our own works and give their rightful place to the works of God. Unless our madness stood in the way, Christ has given testimony to his graces clear enough to prevent their being meanly suppressed. I am the vine, he says, ye are the branches: my Father is the husbandman. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me: for without me ye can do nothing [John 15:1, 4–5]. If we bear no more fruit of ourselves than a branch torn from the earth and deprived of moisture puts forth, there is no further need to ask what the aptitude of our nature toward good may be. Nor is this conclusion ambiguous: Without me ye can do nothing. He does not say we are too weak to suffice for ourselves; by reducing us to nothing, he excludes every opinion of even the slightest faculty. If, engrafted into Christ, we bear fruit like a vine that draws the energy of its growth from the moisture of the earth, from the dew of heaven, and from the warmth of the sun, I see that nothing remains to us in a good work, if we keep unimpaired for God what is his.

Let no one raise that frivolous quibble — that sap is already enclosed in the branch, and the power of bearing fruit is already there, so that it does not take everything from the earth or from the first root, because it contributes something of its own. For Christ means nothing else than that we are dry and worthless wood when separated from him, since apart from him there is no faculty in us of doing well. As he says elsewhere: Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up [Matt. 15:13]. Therefore the Apostle transcribes the whole sum to him, in the passage already cited: It is God, he says, which worketh in you both to will and to do [Phil. 2:13]. The first part of the good work is the will; the second, the vigorous endeavour in carrying it out; of both, God is the author. Therefore we steal from the Lord if we claim for ourselves anything either in the will or in the effect. If it were said that God helps a weak will, something would be left to us; but when it is said that he works the will, then whatever is good in it is placed outside ourselves. Furthermore, since even a good will is overwhelmed by the weight of our flesh so that it cannot rise, he adds that, in wrestling through the difficulties of this struggle, constancy of endeavour is supplied even to the point of effect. For otherwise that word he teaches elsewhere could not stand — that it is God alone who worketh all in all [1 Cor. 12:6] — where, as we have shown above, the whole course of the spiritual life is comprehended.

For this reason David, having prayed that the ways of God be opened to him, that he may walk in his truth, immediately adds: Unite my heart to fear thy name [Ps. 86:11] — by which words he signifies that even those who are rightly disposed are liable to so many distractions that they easily vanish or slip away, unless they are strengthened unto constancy. For this reason, elsewhere, having prayed that his steps be directed to keep God’s word, he asks also for strength to wage the battle: Let not any iniquity have dominion over me [Ps. 119:133].

In this manner, therefore, the Lord both begins and completes the good work in us: it is his that the will conceives the love of what is right; his that it is inclined to the pursuit of it; his that it is stirred and moved to the endeavour of following it. Then it is his that the choice, the pursuit, and the endeavour do not flag but advance even to their effect. And lastly, it is his that man steadfastly perseveres in them and holds firm to the end.
3.10.

He moves the will, not—as has been handed down and believed for many centuries—as though it were afterwards left to our choice either to obey or to resist His motion, but by effectually inclining it.

Therefore we must reject that saying so often repeated by Chrysostom: “He draws the willing.” By this he implies that the Lord merely stretches out His hand and waits to see whether we are pleased to accept His help.

We grant that such was the condition of man before the fall, that he was able to incline either way. But since he proved by his own example how miserable free will is unless God works in us both the will and the power to act, what will become of us if God bestows His grace upon us only in that measure? Indeed, by such teaching we ourselves obscure and diminish His grace through our ingratitude.

For the Apostle does not teach that the grace of a good will is merely offered to us, to be accepted if we choose; rather, he declares that God Himself works the willing within us. This means nothing less than that the Lord, by His Spirit, directs, bends, governs, and rules our hearts as His own possession.

Nor does God promise through Ezekiel that He will give His elect a new Spirit merely so that they may be able to walk in His statutes, but that they shall actually walk in them (Ezekiel 11:19; 36:27).

Neither can the words of Christ be understood otherwise: “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me” (John 6:45). They teach that the grace of God is effectual in itself, as Augustine also firmly maintains.

Nor does the Lord bestow this grace indiscriminately upon all, as is commonly asserted in that saying attributed (if I mistake not) to Occam, that God denies His grace to no one who does what lies within him. Men ought indeed to be taught that the goodness of God is set before all without exception who seek it. But since none begin to seek until heavenly grace has first breathed upon them, even this small portion of praise must not be taken away from His grace.

It is, indeed, the peculiar privilege of the elect that, being regenerated by the Spirit of God, they are led and governed by His direction.

Accordingly, Augustine rightly mocks those who claim for themselves any part in willing, just as he reproves those who imagine that what belongs to free election is given equally to all:

“Nature is common to all; grace is not.”

He calls it a glassy subtlety, glittering with mere vanity, to extend universally what God bestows only upon whom He wills.

Again he says:

“How did you come? By believing. Take heed lest, while you claim that you yourself found the right way, you perish from the right way. ‘I came,’ you say, ‘by free will; I came by my own choice.’ Why do you swell with pride? Would you know that even this was given to you? Hear Him who calls: ‘No man can come to me, except my Father which hath sent me draw him'” (John 6:44).

And from the words of John it is beyond dispute that the hearts of the godly are so effectually governed by God that they follow Him with an unwavering affection:

“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” (1 John 3:9)

Here we plainly see that the intermediate movement imagined by the Schoolmen—whereby it is left to man either to comply with grace or to reject it—is altogether excluded. For the Apostle ascribes perseverance to the effectual and abiding work of God Himself.
3.11.

There would never have been any doubt that perseverance is to be regarded as the free gift of God, had it not been for the pernicious error that it is bestowed according to men’s merit, in proportion as each one has shown himself grateful for the first grace.

But this error itself arose from the notion that it lies within our own power either to reject or to receive the grace of God when it is offered. Once that opinion is overthrown, the other falls of itself.

Yet here they err in two ways. Besides teaching that our gratitude for, and proper use of, the first grace is rewarded with further graces, they also add that grace no longer works alone within us, but merely co-operates with us.

As to the first point, we must hold that, as the Lord daily enriches His servants and adorns them with fresh gifts of His grace, He does so because He delights in the work He has begun in them, and finds in them what He is pleased to crown with still greater grace. To this belong such sayings as, “Unto every one that hath shall be given,” and, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.”

Yet two errors must carefully be avoided. First, we must not say that the faithful use of the first grace merits later graces, as though man, by his own diligence, made the grace of God effectual. Second, this recompense must never be understood in such a way that grace ceases to be the free gift of God.

I freely acknowledge, therefore, that believers ought to expect this blessing from God: that the better use they make of the graces already received, the more abundantly they shall afterwards be enriched. Yet I also maintain that even this right use proceeds from the Lord, and that this reward flows solely from His free and gracious favour.

They likewise misuse, and indeed most unhappily, the familiar distinction between operating grace and co-operating grace.

Augustine certainly employed this distinction, but he carefully qualified it by explaining that God, by co-operating, perfects what He began by operating; and that it is the very same grace which receives different names according to the different manner of its operation.

It follows that Augustine does not divide the work between God and us, as though each contributed independently to one common effect. Rather, he is describing the continued and increasing operation of the one grace of God.

This is exactly what he means elsewhere when he says that many gifts of God precede the good will of man—and among those gifts is the good will itself.

From this it follows that the will has nothing left which it may claim as its own.

Paul states the same truth explicitly. Having said that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do” (Philippians 2:13), he immediately adds, “of his good pleasure,” thereby showing that both proceed entirely from God’s free and sovereign goodness.

As for what they commonly say—that after we have given place to the first grace, our own efforts afterwards co-operate with the grace that follows—I answer this:

If they mean that, once we have been subdued by the power of God into obedience to righteousness, we willingly continue, and are inclined to follow wherever grace leads, I raise no objection. For it is most certain that wherever the grace of God reigns, there exists a ready and cheerful obedience.

But from where does that willingness arise except from this: that the Spirit of God, always remaining consistent with Himself, continues to nourish and strengthen unto perseverance the very obedience which He first created?

If, however, they mean that man derives from himself something by which he may join his own strength to the grace of God, they are wandering into a most deadly error.
3.12.

To this same error they ignorantly apply the Apostle’s words:
“I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)

They interpret them as though Paul, perceiving that it sounded somewhat boastful to exalt himself above all the others, corrected himself by transferring the praise to the grace of God—but only in such a way that he still regarded himself as a fellow-worker with grace. It is remarkable that so many men, otherwise sound in judgment, have stumbled over so small a stone.

For the Apostle does not say that the grace of God laboured with him, as though making him a partner in the work. Rather, by this correction he ascribes the whole praise of his labour to grace alone: “It was not I,” he says, “who laboured, but the grace of God that was with me.” They were misled partly by the ambiguity of the expression, but even more by an unfortunate translation which overlooked the force of the Greek article. For, if rendered more literally, Paul is not saying that grace was his fellow-worker, but that the grace which was with him was the sole author of all that he accomplished.

This Augustine teaches plainly, though briefly, when he writes:
“The good will of man is preceded by many gifts of God, though not by all; for among those gifts which precede it, the good will itself is included.”

He immediately gives the reason, because it is written:
“His mercy shall prevent me” (Psalm 59:10),

and again,
“Surely mercy shall follow me” (Psalm 23:6).

God’s mercy goes before the unwilling, that he may become willing; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. Bernard speaks to the same effect when he puts these words into the mouth of the Church: “Draw me, in a certain sense, even against my will, that Thou mayest make me willing; draw me while I linger, that Thou mayest make me run.”
3.13.

Let us now hear Augustine speak in his own words, lest the Pelagians of our own age—that is, the Sorbonne Sophists—should, as is their custom, accuse us of opposing the whole of antiquity. In this they merely imitate their father Pelagius, by whom Augustine himself was once drawn into the same contest.

In his work On Rebuke and Grace, addressed to Valentinus, Augustine treats this matter at greater length. I shall quote only the substance in his own words:

“The grace of persevering in good was given to Adam, if he should will it; but to us it is given that we should will it, and by willing overcome concupiscence.”

Accordingly, Adam was given the ability, if he willed, to persevere; but he was not given the will by which he might persevere. To us, however, both the will and the ability are given.

“The first freedom,” he says, “was the ability not to sin; ours is far greater—not to be able to sin.”

Lest anyone imagine that he is speaking of the future perfection which we shall possess after immortality—as Lombard wrongly interprets him—Augustine removes this difficulty a little later.

“The wills of the saints are so inflamed by the Holy Spirit that they therefore are able because they so will, and therefore so will because God works in them to will in this manner. For if, in the midst of such weakness—in which virtue must be made perfect in order to restrain pride—their own will were left to itself, so that by God’s help they might be able, if they willed, while God did not also work in them to will, then, amid so many temptations, the will itself would yield through its weakness, and therefore they could not persevere. Accordingly, the weakness of the human will has been so aided that it is governed by divine grace with an unfailing and inseparable efficacy; and thus, though weak in itself, it never fails.”

Augustine then explains more fully how our hearts necessarily follow the movement of God when He works within them. Indeed, he says that the Lord draws men according to their own wills—but wills which He Himself has wrought.

Here, then, we have Augustine himself bearing witness to the very point we chiefly seek to establish: that the Lord does not merely offer grace to be either accepted or rejected at the pleasure of each man’s free choice. Rather, grace itself forms both the choice and the will within the heart, so that every good work which follows is its fruit and effect. The will that obeys grace is no other than the will which grace itself has produced.

These also are Augustine’s words elsewhere:

“Grace alone accomplishes every good work within us.”
3.14.

When Augustine says elsewhere that grace does not destroy the will, but changes it from evil to good, and, once made good, strengthens it, he means only this: that man is not drawn as though carried along by an outward force, apart from any movement of his own heart. Rather, he is so inwardly transformed that his obedience proceeds willingly from the heart.

That this grace is given particularly and freely to the elect, he writes to Boniface in these words:

“We know that the grace of God is not given to all men. And to those to whom it is given, it is given neither according to the merit of works nor according to the merit of the will, but by free grace. And to those to whom it is not given, we know that it is withheld by the righteous judgment of God.”

In the same letter he vigorously refutes the opinion that subsequent grace is bestowed as a reward for human merit, because men have made themselves worthy of it by not rejecting the first grace.

Indeed, he insists that Pelagius must confess that grace is necessary for every single good act, and that it is not given as a reward for works, if it is truly to remain grace.

But the whole matter cannot be more briefly or more fully stated than in the eighth chapter of his book On Rebuke and Grace, addressed to Valentinus, where he teaches:

1. that the human will attains freedom, not by its own liberty, but by grace;
2. that by this same grace, through the inward impression of holy delight, it is established in steadfast perseverance;
3. that it is strengthened with invincible power;
4. that, while grace governs it, it never falls away, but the moment grace withdraws, it immediately collapses;
5. that by the Lord’s free mercy it is both converted to good, and, once converted, continues steadfast in that good;
6. and that both the direction of the human will toward good, and its perseverance after it has been directed, depend solely upon the will of God, and not in the least upon any merit of its own.

Thus there remains to man such free will—if one still wishes to use that expression—as Augustine elsewhere describes it: a will which can neither turn itself to God nor continue in God except by grace, and which owes whatever power it possesses entirely to that grace.

Chapter 4. How God Works in the Hearts of Men.
4.1

That man is held so captive under the yoke of sin that, by his own nature, he can neither aspire to what is good even in desire, nor strive after it with any earnestness, has, I trust, already been sufficiently proved.

Moreover, we have distinguished between necessity and compulsion, so that it is clear that, although man sins necessarily, he nevertheless sins willingly.

But since, in being given over to the bondage of the devil, he appears to be governed more by the devil’s will than by his own, we must explain what sort of agency belongs to each. We must also resolve whether anything in evil works ought to be attributed to God, since Scripture indicates that His own activity is present even in them.

Augustine somewhere compares the human will to a horse waiting for the guidance of its rider, and God and the devil to the riders themselves.

“If God mounts it,” he says, “like a wise and skilful rider, He directs it with perfect control. He urges it on when it is sluggish, restrains it when it runs too swiftly, checks its wildness and unruly passions, subdues its stubbornness, and guides it into the right path. But if the devil has taken possession of it, like a reckless and unskilled rider he drives it through trackless places, plunges it into pits, hurls it over precipices, and urges it on to stubbornness and savagery.”

Since no better illustration readily presents itself, we shall be content with this one for the present.

Therefore, when the will of the natural man is said to be subject to the dominion of the devil so as to be moved by him, the meaning is not that the will resists and is forced into obedience, as unwilling slaves are compelled by their master’s authority to perform his commands. Rather, being bewitched by Satan’s deceptions, it necessarily yields itself to his every direction.

For those whom the Lord does not graciously govern by His Spirit, He, in righteous judgment, gives over to the working of Satan. Thus the Apostle says that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,” who are appointed to destruction, lest they should see the light of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). Elsewhere he says that Satan “now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

The blindness of the wicked, together with all the sins that flow from it, is therefore called the work of Satan. Yet the cause of these evils is not to be sought outside the human will itself. It is from the will that the root of evil springs, and in it lies the foundation of Satan’s kingdom—that is, sin.
4.2.

The manner of God’s action in such works is altogether different. To make this more certain and clear to us, let us take as an example the calamity which the Chaldeans inflicted upon holy Job. The Chaldeans, having slain his servants, violently plunder his flocks. Their wicked deed is manifest; nor is Satan inactive in the work, for the history tells us that the whole affair proceeded from him. Yet Job himself recognises in it the work of the Lord, whom he declares to have taken away what the Chaldeans had seized.

How, then, can we ascribe the same work to God, to Satan, and to man as its authors, without either excusing Satan by making God his partner, or declaring God the author of evil? Easily, if we consider first the purpose for which each acts, and then the manner in which each acts.

The Lord’s purpose is to exercise the patience of His servant by affliction. Satan seeks to drive him to despair. The Chaldeans desire, contrary to all right and justice, to enrich themselves with another man’s possessions. So great a difference in their purposes already makes a profound distinction in the work itself.

There is no less difference in the manner of their acting. The Lord permits Satan to afflict His servant; He permits and delivers over to him the Chaldeans, whom He has appointed as instruments for carrying this out. Satan, in turn, goads the already wicked hearts of the Chaldeans with his poisonous incitements to perpetrate the crime. They themselves rush furiously into injustice, involving and defiling all their members in the deed.

Thus Satan is properly said to act in the reprobate, in whom he exercises his kingdom—that is, the kingdom of wickedness. God also is said to act, but in His own manner: for Satan himself, being the instrument of God’s wrath, is bent and directed this way or that according to God’s will and command, for the execution of His righteous judgments.

I leave aside here that universal operation of God by which all creatures, as they are sustained by Him, likewise derive from Him the power by which they act. I speak only of that special operation which appears in each particular deed.

We see, therefore, that there is no absurdity in ascribing the same deed to God, to Satan, and to man. But the difference of purpose and manner is such that in the very same deed the blameless righteousness of God shines forth, while the wickedness of Satan and man displays itself to their own shame.
4.3

The ancient writers sometimes shrink, with an excess of reverence, even from a plain confession of the truth on this point, fearing that they might open a door to the ungodly to speak irreverently against the works of God. While I readily embrace their sobriety, I see no danger in simply holding what Scripture teaches.

Even Augustine is not always free from this excessive caution, as when he says that hardening and blinding belong not to the operation of God, but to His foreknowledge. Yet such subtleties cannot stand against the many expressions of Scripture, which plainly show that something more than God’s foreknowledge is involved.

Indeed, Augustine himself, in the fifth book Against Julian, argues at length that sins proceed not merely from God’s permission or forbearance, but also from His power, whereby former sins are thus punished.

Likewise, what they allege concerning mere permission is too weak to stand. Scripture repeatedly declares that God blinds and hardens the reprobate, turns, inclines, and impels their hearts, as I have elsewhere shown more fully. What this means is by no means explained if we resort merely to foreknowledge or permission.

We therefore answer that God acts in this manner in two ways.

First, when His light is withdrawn, nothing remains but darkness and blindness; when His Spirit is taken away, our hearts harden into stone; when His direction ceases, they are twisted into perversity. Thus He is rightly said to blind, harden, and incline those from whom He takes away the power to see, to obey, and to act rightly.

The second manner comes much nearer to the proper force of the words: in executing His judgments, God employs Satan as the minister of His wrath, directs the counsels of the wicked wherever He wills, stirs their wills, and strengthens their endeavours.

Thus, when Moses relates that King Sihon would not allow the people to pass through his land because “the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate,” he immediately adds the purpose of God’s counsel: “that he might deliver him into thy hand” (Deuteronomy 2:30).

Therefore, because God had determined to destroy him, the hardening of his heart was God’s preparation of him for destruction.
4.4.

According to the first manner, these passages appear to be spoken: “He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged” (Job 12:20; Ezek. 7:26). Again, “He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way” (Ps. 107:40). Likewise, “O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?” (Isa. 63:17). For these passages indicate rather what God makes men to become by forsaking them, than the manner in which He actively works in them.

But there are other testimonies which go further. Such are those concerning the hardening of Pharaoh: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” that he may not hearken unto you and let the people go (Exod. 4:21; 7:3). Afterwards He says that He hardened his heart and made it strong (Exod. 10:1). Did He harden it merely by not softening it? That indeed is true; but He did something more: He committed Pharaoh’s heart to Satan, to be confirmed in obstinacy. Hence He had said before, “I will hold his heart.”

The people go forth from Egypt; the hostile inhabitants of the land come out against them. By whom were they stirred up? Moses certainly declared to the people that it was the Lord who had hardened their hearts (Deut. 2:30). And the Prophet, recounting the same history, says, “He turned their heart to hate his people” (Ps. 105:25). You cannot now say that, being merely forsaken by the counsel of the Lord, they stumbled of themselves. For if their hearts are hardened and turned, they are deliberately directed to that very end.

Moreover, whenever God was pleased to avenge the transgressions of His people, how did He accomplish His work through the reprobate? In such a manner that you may see the efficacy of the action to belong to Him, while they supplied only the service of instruments. Thus at one time He threatens to summon them by His hiss (Isa. 5:26; 7:18); at another, that they shall be as a net in His hand for ensnaring (Ezek. 12:13; 17:20); and elsewhere, as a hammer for striking the Israelites (Jer. 50:23).

But He declared most plainly that He is not inactive in them when He calls Sennacherib an axe (Isa. 10:15), which His own hand both appoints and wields for cutting.

Augustine therefore defines the matter well in one place: that they sin is their own; but that in sinning they accomplish this or that particular work proceeds from the power of God, who divides the darkness according to His good pleasure.
4.5.

Moreover, that Satan serves as an instrument in stirring up the reprobate, whenever the Lord by His providence directs them this way or that, may be sufficiently established from a single passage. For in Samuel it is repeatedly said that Saul was either seized or forsaken by “an evil spirit from the LORD” (1 Sam. 16:14; 18:10; 19:9). It would be impious to refer this to the Holy Spirit. The unclean spirit, therefore, is called the spirit of God, because he answers to God’s command and power, acting rather as His instrument than as an author of himself.

To this must be added what Paul teaches: that God sends the efficacy of error and deception, that those who have not obeyed the truth should believe a lie (2 Thess. 2:11).

Yet in the same work there always remains a vast difference between what the Lord does and what Satan and the wicked intend. The Lord causes the evil instruments which He has under His hand, and can turn wherever He pleases, to serve His righteousness. They, being evil, bring forth in action the wickedness conceived from the depravity of their own nature.

The remaining points necessary both to vindicate the majesty of God from calumny and to cut off every evasion of the wicked have already been explained in the chapter on Providence. My purpose here has been only to show briefly how Satan reigns in the reprobate, and how the Lord acts both in Satan and in them.
4.6.

As for actions which are neither righteous in themselves nor sinful, and which concern the bodily rather than the spiritual life, although we touched above upon what liberty man possesses in such matters, we have not yet fully explained it. Some have allowed him free choice in these things, more, as I judge, because they were unwilling to dispute over a matter of lesser importance than because they meant firmly to maintain what they conceded.

For my part, although I acknowledge that those who confess themselves to possess no power unto righteousness hold what is chiefly necessary to know for salvation, I do not think this further point should be neglected: that we may know it to be a special grace of the Lord whenever it enters our mind to choose what is for our good, whenever our will inclines towards it, and, conversely, whenever both mind and inclination recoil from what would otherwise have harmed us. And the power of divine providence extends so far that it not only causes events to issue as He has foreseen to be expedient, but also directs the wills of men towards the same end.

Indeed, if we judge the ordering of outward affairs by our own sense, we shall not doubt that they are thus far subject to human choice. But if we give ear to the many testimonies which proclaim that the Lord governs the minds of men even in these matters, we shall be compelled to subject that very choice to the special movement of God.

Who inclined the Egyptians towards the Israelites, so that they lent them their most precious vessels? (Exod. 11:3). They would never of themselves have been so disposed. Their minds, therefore, were more subject to the Lord than governed by themselves. Nor indeed would Jacob, unless persuaded that God disposes men to different affections as He pleases, have said concerning his son Joseph—whom he supposed to be merely an Egyptian, and a heathen—“God Almighty give you mercy before the man” (Gen. 43:14). Likewise the whole Church confesses in the Psalm that, when God was pleased to show mercy to His people, He subdued the hearts of cruel nations to compassion towards them (Ps. 106:46). Again, when Saul was kindled with anger and prepared himself for war, the cause is expressly stated: the Spirit of God came upon him (1 Sam. 11:6).

Who turned Absalom’s mind from embracing the counsel of Ahithophel, which had formerly been regarded as an oracle? (2 Sam. 17:14). Who inclined Rehoboam to be persuaded by the counsel of the young men? (1 Kings 12:10). Who struck with terror nations previously renowned for their boldness at the approach of Israel? Rahab the harlot confessed that this was the work of God (Josh. 2:9). And who, in turn, cast down the hearts of Israel with fear and trembling, but He who had threatened in the Law that He would give them a trembling heart? (Lev. 26:36; Deut. 28:65).
4.7.

Someone will object that these are exceptional examples, and that all things ought by no means to be judged according to their rule. I answer that they sufficiently prove what I contend: that whenever God wills to make way for His providence, He bends and turns the wills of men even in outward matters; and that their choice is never so free that the sovereign will of God does not rule over its liberty.

Whether you will or not, daily experience compels you to acknowledge that your mind depends more upon the movement of God than upon the freedom of your own choice. For often, in matters of no great perplexity, your judgement and understanding fail you; in things easy to accomplish, your courage gives way. Conversely, in matters most obscure, a ready counsel is immediately supplied; and amid great and dangerous affairs, a spirit rises above every difficulty. In this sense I understand Solomon’s words, “The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them” (Prov. 20:12). For he does not appear to me to speak merely of their creation, but of the special grace by which they perform their proper function.

And when he writes that “the king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Prov. 21:1), he certainly comprehends the whole kind under one particular instance. For if any man’s will were free from all subjection, that privilege would belong above all to the will of a king, which exercises a kind of dominion over the wills of others. But if even the king’s will is bent by the hand of God, neither can ours be exempted from the same condition.

On this matter there is an excellent statement of Augustine:

“Scripture, if diligently examined, shows that not only the good wills of men—which God Himself makes out of evil wills, and which, once made by Him, He directs unto good works and eternal life—but also those wills which preserve the order of this present world, are so entirely in the power of God that He causes them to incline wherever and whenever He wills, whether to bestow benefits or to inflict punishments, by a judgement most secret indeed, but most just.”
—Augustine, On Grace and Free Will, ch. 20.
4.8.

Here readers should remember that the power of the human will is not to be estimated by the outcome of events, as some unlearned men perversely do. For they think they have neatly and ingeniously proved the servitude of the human will from the fact that not even the greatest monarchs have all things turn out according to their wishes. But the power of which we speak must be considered within man himself, and not measured by outward success.

For in the discussion of free will, the question is not whether a man is able, despite outward hindrances, to accomplish and execute whatever he has resolved in his mind; but whether, in any given matter, he possesses freedom both in the choice of his judgement and in the inclination of his will. If both of these belong to man, Atilius Regulus, confined within the torments of the spiked cask, would possess no less free will than Augustus Caesar, governing a great part of the world by his command.

Chapter 5. A Refutation of the Objections Commonly Brought Forward in Defence of Free Will.

5.1.

Enough might now seem to have been said concerning the bondage of the human will, were it not that those who seek to overthrow it by a false notion of liberty bring forward certain arguments against us in defence of their own opinion. They first heap up certain supposed absurdities, by which they seek to make our doctrine odious, as though it were contrary even to common sense; afterwards they assail it with testimonies of Scripture. We shall repel both assaults in their order.

If sin, they say, is necessary, it ceases to be sin; if it is voluntary, then it can be avoided. These were also the weapons with which Pelagius attacked Augustine. Yet we will not burden our opponents with the weight of Augustine’s name until we have answered the matter itself.

I deny, therefore, that sin is any less imputable because it is necessary; and I deny, in turn, that what they infer follows—namely, that because sin is voluntary, it must therefore be avoidable. For if anyone wishes to contend with God and evade His judgement under the pretext that he could not have done otherwise, the answer already given elsewhere stands ready: this necessity arises not from creation, but from the corruption of nature, whereby men, enslaved to sin, can will nothing but evil.

For whence comes this inability, which the wicked would gladly plead as their excuse, except that Adam voluntarily subjected himself to the tyranny of the devil? Hence arose that depravity by whose bonds we are now held fast: the first man revolted from his Maker. If, therefore, all men are justly held guilty of that revolt, let them not imagine themselves excused by the necessity which followed from it, since in that very necessity they possess a most evident cause of their condemnation.

I have already explained this clearly above, and have set forth the devil himself as an example, from which it appears that he who sins necessarily sins no less voluntarily. Conversely, although the will of the elect angels is incapable of turning aside from the good, it does not therefore cease to be will. Bernard also teaches this aptly when he says that we are the more miserable because our necessity is voluntary; yet this necessity binds us so completely under its dominion that we are slaves of sin, as we have already related (Sermon 81 on the Song of Songs).

The second part of their reasoning is faulty because it wrongly passes from what is voluntary to what is free. But we have already demonstrated that an act may be voluntary without therefore being subject to free choice.
5.2.

They further object that, unless both virtues and vices proceed from the free choice of the will, it is unreasonable that man should either suffer punishment or receive reward. Although this argument comes from Aristotle, I acknowledge that Chrysostom and Jerome also employ it in certain places. Yet Jerome himself does not conceal that it was a familiar argument of the Pelagians, and even reports their own words: “If the grace of God works in us, then it is grace, and not we who labour, that shall be crowned.”

As to punishments, I answer that they are justly inflicted upon us, since the guilt of sin proceeds from us. For what difference does it make whether a man sins with a free or an enslaved judgement, provided that he sins from a voluntary desire? Especially since man is proved to be a sinner by this very fact: that he is under the bondage of sin.

As to the rewards of righteousness, what great absurdity would there be in confessing that they depend upon the goodness of God rather than upon our own merits? How often does this saying recur in Augustine: God crowns not our merits, but His own gifts; and that they are called rewards, not because they are owed to our merits, but because they are bestowed in return for graces already given?

They rightly perceive that no place remains for merits if they do not proceed from the fountain of free will; but in regarding this as so great an absurdity, they wander far from the truth.

For Augustine everywhere teaches as necessary what they consider it impious even to confess. Thus he says:

“What merits can any men have? When He came, not with the reward that was due, but with free grace, He found all men sinners, being Himself alone free from sin and the Liberator from sins.”

Again:

“If what is due to you were rendered, you would have to be punished. What then has God done? He has not rendered to you the punishment that was due, but has bestowed upon you grace that was not due. If you wish to be a stranger to grace, boast of your merits.”

Again:

“Of yourself you are nothing; your sins are your own, but your merits are God’s. Punishment is due to you; and when the reward comes, He will crown His own gifts, not your merits.”

In the same sense he teaches elsewhere that grace does not arise from merit, but merit from grace. And shortly afterwards he concludes that God precedes all our merits with His own gifts, that He may thereby bring forth merits which He afterwards rewards; and that He gives altogether freely, because He finds nothing in us which He may save.

But why is it necessary to compile a longer catalogue, when such statements occur continually throughout Augustine’s writings?

The Apostle will deliver them still more completely from this error, if they will only hear from what source he derives the glory of the saints: “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30).

Why then, according to the Apostle, are the faithful crowned (2 Tim. 4:8)? Because by the mercy of the Lord, and not by their own diligence, they were elected, called, and justified.

Away, then, with this empty fear that there will no longer be any merits if free will is overthrown. For it is utter folly to be frightened away from, and recoil from, that very truth to which Scripture calls us. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” says Paul. “Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). You see that for this very reason he strips free will of everything, that he may leave no place for merit.

Nevertheless, since the beneficence and liberality of God are inexhaustible and manifold, the graces which He bestows upon us, because He makes them ours, He afterwards rewards as though they were our own virtues.
5.3.

They add another objection, which appears to have been taken from Chrysostom: If it does not lie within the power of our will to choose either good or evil, then all who partake of the same nature must either be evil or all be good. Nor does the author of The Calling of the Gentiles, a work circulated under the name of Ambrose, differ much from him when he reasons that no one would ever fall away from the faith unless the grace of God left us subject to the condition of mutability. It is remarkable that such great men should here have forgotten themselves.

For how did it not occur to Chrysostom that it is the election of God which thus distinguishes between men? We are not in the least afraid to concede what Paul so earnestly maintains: that all men alike are corrupt and given over to wickedness. But with the Apostle we immediately add that it is owing to the mercy of God that all do not remain in their corruption.

Therefore, since by nature we all suffer from the same disease, only those recover upon whom the Lord is pleased to lay His healing hand. The rest, whom in His righteous judgement He passes by, waste away in their own corruption until they are consumed.

Nor is there any other reason why some persevere to the end while others fall away after beginning their course. For perseverance itself is the gift of God, which He does not bestow indiscriminately upon all, but imparts to whom He pleases.

If, then, the cause of the difference is asked—why some persevere steadfastly while others fall away through instability—we know no other than this: the Lord sustains the former, strengthening them by His own power lest they perish; while to the latter, that they may serve as examples of human instability, He does not impart the same power.
5.4.

They further insist that exhortations are undertaken in vain, admonitions are useless, and rebukes absurd, unless it lies within the sinner’s own power to obey them. When similar objections were formerly brought against Augustine, he was compelled to write his treatise On Rebuke and Grace. Although he answers them there at length, he nevertheless reduces his opponents to this summary:

“O man, in the commandment learn what you ought to do; in rebuke learn that through your own fault you do not possess the power to do it; in prayer learn from whom you may receive what you desire to possess.”

His treatise On the Spirit and the Letter follows much the same argument, where he teaches that God does not measure the commands of His Law according to human strength, but, having commanded what is right, freely gives to His elect the power to fulfil what He commands.

Nor does this matter require a lengthy dispute. In the first place, we do not stand alone in this cause: Christ and all the Apostles stand with us. Let our opponents consider how they expect to prevail in a contest in which they have such adversaries.

Christ testifies that “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). Does He therefore refrain from reproving and chastening those who do evil apart from Him? Does He therefore cease to exhort every man to apply himself to good works?

How severely does Paul rebuke the Corinthians for their neglect of charity! Yet he afterwards prays that this very charity may be given them by the Lord. In the Epistle to the Romans he testifies that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16); yet afterwards he does not cease to admonish, exhort, and rebuke.

Why, then, do they not complain against the Lord for thus labouring in vain, by requiring from men those very things which He alone can give, and by chastening those sins which are committed through the absence of His grace? Why do they not admonish Paul to spare those in whose power it is neither to will nor to run, unless preceded by the mercy of God, which for the present has not been given them?

As though the Lord did not have the best reason for this manner of teaching—a reason readily apparent to those who seek it with reverence.

How much doctrine, exhortation, and rebuke can accomplish of themselves in changing the heart, Paul shows when he writes that “neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase” (1 Cor. 3:7). Thus God alone works effectually.

In the same way, we see Moses solemnly enforce the commandments of the Law, and the Prophets press them urgently and threaten transgressors severely; yet at the same time they confess that men attain true understanding only when a heart to understand is given them; that it is God’s peculiar work to circumcise their hearts, to take away their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh, to write His Law upon their inward parts, and, finally, by renewing their souls, to make the doctrine effectual.
5.5.

To what purpose, then, are exhortations? If the wicked despise them with obstinate hearts, they shall stand as a testimony against them when they come before the judgement-seat of the Lord; indeed, even now they strike and wound their consciences. For however insolently the most hardened sinner may mock them, he cannot disprove them.

“But what,” you will say, “is a miserable man to do when that softness of heart which is necessary for obedience has been denied him?” Rather, why does he seek an excuse, when he can impute his hardness to none but himself? Thus the wicked, however gladly they would evade exhortations if they could, are, whether they will or not, laid low by their power.

But their chief usefulness must be considered with respect to the faithful. For as the Lord works all things in them by His Spirit, so He does not neglect the instrument of His Word, but employs it with effectual power. Let this truth, therefore, stand firm: the whole strength of the godly consists in the grace of God, according to the saying of the Prophet, “I will give them one heart . . . that they may walk in my statutes” (Ezek. 11:19–20).

“But,” you will object, “why then are they admonished of their duty, rather than simply left to the direction of the Spirit? Why are they urged by exhortations, when they can hasten no faster than the impulse of the Spirit carries them? Why are they chastened whenever they turn aside from the way, when they have fallen through the necessary weakness of the flesh?”

O man, who art thou that thou shouldest prescribe a law to God? If He wills by exhortation to prepare us for the reception of that very grace by which we are enabled to obey the exhortation, what is there in such an order of His working that you can censure or revile?

Even if exhortations and rebukes accomplished nothing among the godly except to convict them of sin, they ought for that reason alone not to be regarded as altogether useless. But now, when the Spirit works inwardly, they have great power to kindle the desire of good, to shake off sluggishness, to take away the pleasure and poisonous sweetness of iniquity, and, on the contrary, to produce hatred and weariness of it. Who, then, will dare to cavil that they are superfluous?

If anyone desires a clearer answer, let him take this: God works in His elect in two ways: inwardly, by His Spirit; outwardly, by His Word. By the Spirit, illuminating their minds and forming their hearts to the love and practice of righteousness, He makes them new creatures. By the Word, He stirs them up to desire, seek, and attain that same renewal. In both He displays the efficacy of His hand according to the manner of His dispensation.

When He directs the same Word to the reprobate, although He does not make it effectual for their correction, He nevertheless causes it to serve another purpose: that even now they may be pressed by the testimony of their own conscience, and that at the day of judgement they may be rendered the more inexcusable.

Thus Christ, although He declares that no man can come unto Him unless the Father draw him, and that the elect come after they have heard and learned of the Father (John 6:44–45), does not therefore neglect His office as Teacher. Rather, by His own voice He diligently invites those who must inwardly be taught by the Holy Spirit if they are to profit at all.

And Paul teaches that among the reprobate doctrine is not without effect: for to them it is “the savour of death unto death,” yet nevertheless a sweet savour unto God (2 Cor. 2:15–16).
5.6.

They are exceedingly industrious in heaping together testimonies of Scripture; and they do this deliberately, that since they cannot overwhelm us by their weight, they may at least crush us by their number. But as in battle, when it comes to close combat, an unwarlike multitude, however imposing its display and appearance, is immediately broken and put to flight by a few blows, so it will be very easy for us to scatter them with all their host.

For all the passages which they misuse against us converge upon a very few points. Once, therefore, they have been distributed into their proper classes, a single answer will suffice for many of them, and there will be no need to labour over each passage separately.

They place their chief reliance upon the commandments, which they suppose to be so proportioned to our abilities that whatever is proved to be required by them must necessarily be within our power to perform. They therefore run through the commandments one by one, and from them measure the extent of our strength.

For, they say, either God mocks us when He commands holiness, piety, obedience, chastity, love, and meekness, and forbids uncleanness, idolatry, impurity, anger, robbery, pride, and the like; or He requires only those things which lie within our power.

Nearly all the commandments which they accumulate may be divided into three classes. Some require our first conversion to God; others speak simply of the observance of the Law; others command us to persevere in the grace of God already received. Let us first discuss them all generally, and afterwards descend to the several classes themselves.

It has indeed long been common to extend the powers of man so as to correspond with the commandments of the divine Law, and the argument possesses a certain appearance of reason. Yet it has arisen from the grossest ignorance of the Law.

For those who regard it as an enormous impiety to say that the observance of the Law is impossible rely upon what they consider their strongest argument: that otherwise the Law would have been given in vain. They speak as though Paul had nowhere said anything concerning the purpose of the Law.

For what, I ask, do these statements mean: that “the law was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19); that “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20); that the Law makes sin known as sin (Rom. 7:7); and that “the law entered, that the offence might abound” (Rom. 5:20)?

Was the Law, then, to be limited according to the measure of our strength, lest it should have been given in vain? Rather, it was set far above our strength for the very purpose of convicting us of our inability.

Certainly, according to Paul’s own definition, the end and fulfilment of the Law is love (1 Tim. 1:5). Yet when he prays that the hearts of the Thessalonians may be made to abound in that love (1 Thess. 3:12), he sufficiently confesses that the Law sounds in our ears without effect unless God Himself inspires its whole substance into our hearts.
5.7.

Indeed, if Scripture taught nothing more than that the Law is the rule of life according to which we ought to order our conduct, I too would immediately go over to their opinion. But since Scripture carefully and clearly explains to us the manifold uses of the Law, we ought rather to determine from that interpretation what the Law accomplishes in man.

So far as the present question is concerned, as soon as the Law prescribes what we ought to do, Scripture teaches that the power to obey comes from the goodness of God; and therefore it calls us to prayer, that we may ask Him to give us that power.

If there were only a command, with no promise annexed to it, we might put our strength to the test to see whether it were sufficient to answer the command. But since promises are joined to the commandments, declaring that not merely some assistance, but our entire power to obey lies in the aid of divine grace, they bear more than sufficient testimony that we are not merely unequal to the observance of the Law, but utterly incapable of it in ourselves.

Let them therefore cease to insist upon this supposed proportion between our powers and the commandments of the Law, as though the Lord had measured the rule of righteousness which He gives in the Law according to the measure of our weakness. Rather, we ought to judge from the promises how entirely unprepared we are in ourselves, since in every respect we stand in such great need of His grace.

“But who,” they say, “will believe that the Lord intended His Law for stocks and stones?”

No one is trying to persuade them of any such thing. For the wicked are neither stones nor blocks of wood when, being taught by the Law that their lusts are at enmity with God, they are convicted as guilty by their own testimony; nor are the godly stocks and stones when, being admonished of their inability, they flee to grace.

To this belong those memorable sayings of Augustine:
“God commands what we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask from Him.”

Again:
“Great is the usefulness of the commandments, if free will is allowed only so much as serves to magnify the grace of God.”

Again:
“Faith obtains what the Law commands.”

Indeed, the Law commands for this very reason: that faith may obtain what was commanded by the Law.

And again:
“God requires faith itself from us; yet He does not find what He requires unless He first gives what He may find.”

Likewise:
“Let God give what He commands, and command what He wills.”
5.8.

This will appear more clearly if we examine the three classes of commandments which we mentioned above.

The Lord frequently commands us, both in the Law and in the Prophets, to turn unto Him (Joel 2:12). But the Prophet answers from the other side: “Turn thou me, and I shall be turned”; and again, “after that I was turned, I repented” (Jer. 31:18–19).

He commands us to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts (Deut. 10:16); yet through Moses He declares that He Himself will perform this circumcision (Deut. 30:6). Everywhere He requires newness of heart; but elsewhere He testifies that He Himself gives it (Ezek. 36:26).

For, as Augustine says:“What God promises, we do not accomplish ourselves by free will or nature; He Himself accomplishes it by grace.”

And this is the very principle which Augustine numbers fifth among the rules of Ticonius: that we must carefully distinguish between the Law and the promises, or between the commandments and grace. Let those men go now, then, who infer from the commandments what power man possesses to obey them, and thereby destroy the grace of God by which the commandments themselves are fulfilled.

The commandments of the second class are simple: by them we are commanded to worship God, to serve and cleave to His will, to observe His ordinances, and to follow His doctrine. But there are innumerable passages which testify that whatever righteousness, holiness, piety, or purity we possess is His gift.

Of the third class was that exhortation of Paul and Barnabas, recorded by Luke, in which they urged the faithful “to continue in the grace of God” (Acts 13:43). But elsewhere Paul teaches us from whom the strength necessary for such steadfastness must be sought: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord” (Eph. 6:10).

Elsewhere he forbids us to “grieve the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). Yet because what he there requires could not be performed by men of themselves, he prays to the Lord on behalf of the Thessalonians that He would count them worthy of His holy calling, and fulfil in them every good purpose of His goodness and the work of faith (2 Thess. 1:11). In the same manner, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, when treating of almsgiving, Paul repeatedly commends their good and godly willingness. Yet shortly afterwards he gives thanks to God for putting it into the heart of Titus to undertake the exhortation (2 Cor. 8:16).

If Titus could not even perform the ministry of exhorting others with his own mouth except insofar as God moved him to it, how could the others have been willing to act unless God Himself directed their hearts?
5.9.

The more subtle among them seek to evade all these testimonies by arguing that nothing prevents us from contributing our own strength, while God comes to the aid of our feeble endeavours. They also bring forward passages from the Prophets in which the work of our conversion appears to be divided between God and us: “Turn ye unto me, and I will turn unto you” (Zech. 1:3).

What kind of aid the Lord affords us has already been demonstrated above, and there is no need to repeat it here. I ask only that this one point be granted me: it is vain to infer that we possess the power to fulfil the Law merely because the Lord commands us to obey it. For it is acknowledged that, in order to fulfil all the commandments of God, the grace of the Lawgiver is both necessary and promised to us. From this it is evident that at least more is required of us than we are able to render.

Nor can any evasions dispose of Jeremiah’s declaration that the covenant which God made with the ancient people was ineffectual because it was merely written, and that it cannot be established otherwise than by the addition of the Spirit, who forms the heart to obedience (Jer. 31:32–33).

Nor does the saying, “Turn ye unto me, and I will turn unto you,” lend any support to their error. For the turning of God spoken of there does not mean that work by which He renews our hearts unto repentance, but that by which He manifests Himself favourable and gracious toward us through outward prosperity, just as He sometimes manifests His displeasure through adversity.

The people, therefore, being afflicted with many kinds of misery and calamity, complained that God had turned away from them. He answers that His favour will not fail them if they return to uprightness of life and to Himself, who is the pattern of righteousness.

The passage is therefore wrongly perverted when it is made to imply that the work of conversion is divided between God and man.

We have touched upon these matters more briefly because their proper place will be in our treatment of the Law.
5.10.

The second class of arguments is closely related to the preceding. They allege the promises in which the Lord enters into covenant with us upon the condition of our will, such as: “Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live” (Amos 5:14). Again, “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse . . . the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it” (Isa. 1:19–20). Likewise, “If thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not be removed” (Jer. 4:1); and, “If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments . . . the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth” (Deut. 28:1); and other similar passages.

They think that the benefits which the Lord offers in His promises are improperly, and even mockingly, made dependent upon our will, unless it belongs to us either to establish those promises or to make them void. And certainly it is easy to enlarge upon this matter with eloquent complaints: that the Lord cruelly mocks us when He declares that His favour depends upon our will, if that will is not under our own control; that it would indeed be a splendid liberality in God to set His benefits before us in such a manner that we have no power to enjoy them; and a marvellous certainty of His promises, if they depend upon an impossible condition precisely so that they may never be fulfilled.

Of promises of this kind, to which a condition is annexed, we shall speak elsewhere, where it will become evident that there is nothing absurd in the impossibility of fulfilling their conditions.

For the present question, I deny that God cruelly mocks us when He invites us to obtain His benefits, though He knows us to be utterly incapable of doing so. For since the promises are offered alike to believers and to the wicked, they have their proper use with both.

As by His commandments God pricks the consciences of the wicked, lest they indulge themselves too pleasantly in their sins without any remembrance of His judgements, so by His promises He in a manner calls them to witness how unworthy they are of His goodness. For who will deny that it is most just and fitting that the Lord should do good to those who worship Him, and in His severity punish those who despise His majesty?

God therefore acts rightly and in due order when, to the wicked who are bound in the fetters of sin, He lays down this condition in His promises: that they shall receive His benefits only when they depart from their wickedness—if for no other reason than that they may understand that they are justly excluded from those blessings which belong to the true worshippers of God.

Again, because He seeks by every means to stir up the faithful to implore His grace, it is by no means unreasonable that He should also accomplish through His promises what, as we have shown, He does with great profit toward them through His commandments.

When we are taught by the commandments what the will of God is, we are thereby reminded of our misery, since with our whole heart we are so utterly opposed to it; and at the same time we are stirred up to call upon His Spirit, by whom we may be directed into the right way. But because our sluggishness is not sufficiently aroused by commandments alone, the promises are added, which by a certain sweetness allure us to love what God commands. And the greater our desire for righteousness becomes, the more fervently are we moved to seek the grace of God.

Thus we see how, in those appeals, “If ye be willing,” “If ye shall hearken,” the Lord neither attributes to us a free power of willing or obeying, nor yet mocks us because of our inability.
5.11.

The third class has much in common with the preceding. For they produce passages in which God reproaches an ungrateful people because it was owing solely to themselves that they did not receive every kind of blessing from His goodness. Of this kind are the following: “The Amalekites and the Canaanites are before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD” (Num. 14:43). Again, “Because I called you, and ye answered not, therefore will I do unto this house as I have done to Shiloh” (Jer. 7:13–14). Likewise, “This nation obeyeth not the voice of the LORD their God, nor receiveth correction” (Jer. 7:28); and again, “Because ye have hardened your hearts and would not obey the LORD, all these evils have come upon you.”

“How,” they say, “could such reproaches properly be addressed to men who might immediately answer: ‘We indeed desired prosperity and feared adversity; but if, in order to obtain the one and avoid the other, we did not obey the Lord or hearken to His voice, this was because, being subject to the dominion of sin, we were not free to do so. In vain, therefore, are we reproached for evils which it was not within our power to escape.’”

But leaving aside this plea of necessity, in which there is only a weak and worthless defence, I ask whether they can clear themselves of guilt. For if they stand convicted of any guilt, the Lord does not reproach them without cause when He declares that it was through their own perversity that they failed to enjoy the fruits of His mercy.

Let them answer, then, whether they can deny that their own depraved will was the cause of their obstinacy. If they find the source of the evil within themselves, why are they so eager to search for causes outside themselves, merely that they may not appear to have been the authors of their own destruction?

If, then, it is true that sinners are deprived of divine blessings and chastened with punishments through their own fault and not another’s, there is abundant reason why they should hear such reproaches from the mouth of God. If they obstinately persist in their vices, they may learn in their calamities to accuse and detest their own wickedness rather than charge God with unjust severity. If they have not cast off all teachableness, then, becoming weary of their sins—by which they see that they have deservedly been made miserable and ruined—they may return to the right way and acknowledge by sincere confession the very thing which the Lord sets before them in His rebukes.

That the rebukes of the Prophets already cited served this latter purpose among the godly is evident from Daniel’s solemn prayer in the ninth chapter. An example of the former purpose we see in the Jews, to whom Jeremiah was commanded to declare the cause of their miseries, although nothing would happen otherwise than the Lord had foretold: “Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they will not hearken to thee: thou shalt also call unto them; but they will not answer thee” (Jer. 7:27).

Why, then, was this message proclaimed to deaf ears? That, unwilling and reluctant though they were, they might understand that what they heard was true, and that it would be an impious sacrilege to transfer to God the blame for their evils, when that blame resided in themselves.

With these few answers you may very easily disentangle yourself from that immense heap of testimonies which the enemies of God’s grace are accustomed to pile up, both from the commandments and from the rebukes directed against transgressors of the Law, in order to erect the phantom of free will.

The Jews are reproached in the Psalm as “a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright” (Ps. 78:8). In another Psalm the Prophet exhorts the men of his own age, “Harden not your heart” (Ps. 95:8). This is because the whole guilt of obstinacy lies in the perversity of men. But it is foolish to infer from this that the heart is therefore equally capable of being bent in either direction, since its preparation is from God.

The Prophet says, “I have inclined mine heart to perform thy statutes” (Ps. 119:112), because he had willingly and with a cheerful inclination of mind devoted himself to God. Yet he does not boast that he himself was the author of that inclination, which in the same Psalm he acknowledges to be the gift of God.

We must therefore hold fast Paul’s admonition when he commands the faithful to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” because “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do” (Phil. 2:12–13). He indeed assigns to them the part of acting, lest they indulge the sluggishness of the flesh; but by commanding fear and trembling he so humbles them that they remember that the very thing which they are commanded to do is God’s own work. In this way he expressly teaches that believers act passively, if I may so speak, insofar as the power to act is supplied to them from heaven, so that they may claim absolutely nothing for themselves.

Therefore, when Peter exhorts us to “add to your faith virtue” (2 Pet. 1:5), he does not assign us a secondary part as though we accomplished something separately of ourselves; he merely rouses us from the sluggishness of the flesh, by which faith itself is often stifled.

To the same purpose is Paul’s command, “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19), because sluggishness continually creeps upon believers unless it is corrected. Yet if anyone should infer from this that it lies within their own free choice to cherish the light which has been given them, his ignorance is easily refuted, because the very diligence which Paul requires is itself from God (2 Cor. 7:1). For we are also frequently commanded to cleanse ourselves from every defilement, although the Spirit claims for Himself alone the office of sanctifying us.

Finally, that what properly belongs to God is sometimes transferred to us by way of concession is evident from the words of John: “He that is begotten of God keepeth himself” (1 John 5:18). The advocates of free will seize upon this expression as though we were preserved partly by the power of God and partly by our own, as though this very keeping of which the Apostle speaks were not itself given to us from heaven.

For this reason Christ prays to the Father to keep us from the evil (John 17:15); and we know that the godly, in their warfare against Satan, obtain victory by no other weapons than those which God supplies. Thus Peter, after commanding us to purify our souls in obeying the truth, immediately adds, as though to correct any misunderstanding, “through the Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:22).

In short, John shows how utterly powerless all human strength is in the spiritual conflict when he teaches that those who are born of God cannot sin, because the seed of God remaineth in them (1 John 3:9); and elsewhere he gives the reason: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).
5.12.