V. The will, therefore, is so bound by the slavery of sin, that it cannot excite itself, much less devote itself to any thing good; for such a disposition is the beginning of a conversion to God, which in the Scriptures is attributed solely to Divine grace. Thus Jeremiah prays to the Lord to convert or turn him, if he would have him to be turned.622 Whence the Prophet, in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the faithful, says, “The Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he;”623 alluding to the strong fetters with which the sinner is bound as long as he is deserted by the Lord, and continues under the yoke of the devil. Nevertheless there still remains the faculty of will, which with the strongest propensity is inclined to and rushes into sin; for when man subjected himself to this necessity, he was not deprived of his will, but of soundness of will. Bernard properly observes, that we all have a power to will; but that to will what is good, is an advantage; to will what is evil, a defect. Therefore simply to will belongs to man; to will what is evil, to corrupt nature; to will what is good, to grace. Now, when I assert that the will, being deprived of its liberty, is necessarily drawn or led into evil, I should wonder, if any one considered it as a harsh expression, since it has nothing in it absurd, nor is it unsanctioned by the custom of good men. It offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion. But if any one should ask them, whether God is not necessarily good, and whether the devil is not necessarily evil, – what answer will they make? For there is such a close connection between the goodness of God and his Deity, that his being God is not more necessary than his being good. But the devil is by his fall so alienated from communion with all that is good, that he can do nothing but what is evil. But if any one should sacrilegiously object, that little praise is due to God for his goodness, which he is constrained to preserve, – shall we not readily reply, that his inability to do evil arises from his infinite goodness, and not from the impulse of violence? Therefore, if a necessity of doing well impairs not the liberty of the Divine will in doing well; if the devil, who cannot but do evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily; who then will assert that man sins less voluntarily, because he is under a necessity of sinning? This necessity Augustine every where maintains; and even when he was pressed with the cavils of Celestius, who tried to throw an odium on this doctrine, he confidently expressed himself in these terms: “By means of liberty it came to pass that man fell into sin; but now the penal depravity consequent on it, instead of liberty, has introduced necessity.” And whenever the mention of this subject occurs, he hesitates not to speak in this manner of the necessary servitude of sin. We must therefore observe this grand point of distinction, that man, having been corrupted by his fall, sins voluntarily, not with reluctance or constraint; with the strongest propensity of disposition, not with violent coercion; with the bias of his own passions, and not with external compulsion: yet such is the pravity of his nature, that he cannot be excited and biassed to any thing but what is evil. If this be true, there is no impropriety in affirming, that he is under a necessity of sinning. Bernard, subscribing to what is said by Augustine, thus expresses himself: “Among all the animals, man alone is free; and yet, by the intervention of sin, he also suffers a species of violence; but from the will, not from nature, so that he is not thereby deprived of his innate liberty.” For what is voluntary is also free. And a little after: “The will being, by I know not what corrupt and surprising means, changed for the worse, is itself the author of the necessity to which it is subject; so that neither necessity, being voluntary, can excuse the will, nor the will, being fascinated, can exclude necessity.” For this necessity is in some measure voluntary. Afterwards he says, that we are oppressed with a yoke, but no other than that of a voluntary servitude; that therefore our servitude renders us miserable, and our will renders us inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. At length he concludes, “Thus the soul, in a certain strange and evil manner, under this kind of voluntary and free yet pernicious necessity, is both enslaved and free; enslaved by necessity, free by its will; and, what is more wonderful and more miserable, it is guilty, because free; and enslaved wherein it is guilty; and so therein enslaved wherein it is free.” From these passages the reader clearly perceives that I am teaching no novel doctrine, but what was long ago advanced by Augustine, with the universal consent of pious men, and which for nearly a thousand years after was confined to the cloisters of monks. But Lombard, for want of knowing how to distinguish necessity from coaction, gave rise to a pernicious error.
VI. It is necessary, on the other hand, to consider the remedy of Divine grace, by which the depravity of nature is corrected and healed. For since the Lord, in the assistance which he affords us, bestows on us that which we need, an exhibition of the nature of his work in us will immediately discover the nature of our necessity. 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;”624 by the beginning of a good work he undoubtedly designs the commencement of conversion, which takes place in the will. Therefore God begins the good work in us by exciting in our hearts a love, desire, and ardent pursuit of righteousness; or, to speak more properly, by bending, forming, and directing our hearts towards righteousness; but he completes it, by confirming us to perseverance. That no one may cavil, that the good work is begun by the Lord, inasmuch as the will, which is weak of itself, is assisted by him, the Spirit declares in another place how far the ability of the will reaches, when left to itself. “A new heart also,” says he, “will I give you, 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.”625 Who will assert that the infirmity of the human will is only strengthened by assistance, to enable it efficaciously to aspire to the choice of that which is good, when it actually needs a total transformation and renovation? If there be in a stone any softness, which, by some application, being made more tender, would be flexible in every direction, then I will not deny the flexibility of the human heart to the obedience of rectitude, provided its imperfections are supplied by the grace of God. But if, by this similitude, the Lord intended to show that no good will ever be extracted from our hearts, unless they are entirely renewed, let us not divide between him and us, what he claims exclusively to himself. If, therefore, when God converts us to the pursuit of rectitude, this change is like the transformation of a stone into flesh, it follows, that whatever belongs to our own will is removed, and what succeeds to it is entirely from God. The will, I say, is removed, not considered as the will; because, in the conversion of man, the properties of our original nature remain entire. I assert also, that it is created anew, not that the will then begins to exist, but that it is then converted from an evil into a good one. This I affirm to be done entirely by God, because, according to the testimony of the same Apostle, “we are not sufficient” even “to think.”626 Therefore he elsewhere declares, not merely that God assists the infirmity of our will, or corrects its depravity, but that he “worketh in us to will.”627 Whence it is easy to infer what I have already remarked, that whatever good is in the human will, is the work of pure grace. In the same sense he elsewhere pronounces that it is “God which worketh all in all.”628 For in that place he is not discussing the government of the universe, but asserting that the praise of all the excellences found in the faithful belongs to God alone. And by using the word “all,” he certainly makes God the author of spiritual life from its commencement even to its termination. This is the same as he had before taught in other words, declaring that the faithful are “of God in Christ;”629 where he evidently intends the new creation, by which what belonged to our common nature is abolished. For we must here understand an implied contrast between Adam and Christ, which he states more plainly in another place, where he teaches that “we are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”630 For by this argument he designs to prove that our salvation is gratuitous, because the beginning of all good is from the second creation, which we obtain in Christ. Now, if we possessed any ability, though ever so small, we should also have some portion of merit. But to annihilate all our pretensions, he argues that we have merited nothing, because “we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained;” in which expressions he again signifies that all the parts of good works, even from the first inclination of the mind, are entirely from God. For this reason the Psalmist, after having said that “he (God) hath made us,” that there may be no division of the work, immediately subjoins, “and not we ourselves.”631 That he speaks of regeneration, which is the commencement of the spiritual life, is evident from the context, where it follows immediately after, that “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” We see, then, that not content with having simply attributed to God the praise of our salvation, he expressly excludes us from all fellowship with him; as though he would say, that man has not even the smallest particle remaining in which he can glory, because all is of God.
VII. But there may be some, who will concede that the will, being, of its own spontaneous inclination, averse to what is good, is converted solely by the power of the Lord; yet in such a manner, that being previously prepared, it has also its own share in the work; that grace, as Augustine teaches, precedes every good work, the will following grace, not leading it, being its companion, not its guide. This unobjectionable observation of that holy man, Peter Lombard preposterously wrests to an erroneous meaning. Now, I contend that both in the words of the Prophet which I have cited, and in other passages, these two things are clearly signified, that the Lord corrects our depraved will, or rather removes it, and of himself introduces a good one in its place. As it is preceded by grace, I allow you to style it an attendant; but since its reformation is the work of the Lord, it is wrong to attribute to man a voluntary obedience in following the guidance of grace. Therefore it is not a proper expression of Chrysostom, that grace is able to effect nothing without the will, nor the will without grace; as if grace did not produce the will itself, as we have just seen from Paul. Nor was it the intention of Augustine, when he called the human will the companion of grace, to assign to it any secondary office next to grace in the good work; but with a view to refute the nefarious dogma broached by Pelagius, who made the prime cause of salvation to consist in human merit, he contends, what was sufficient for his present argument, that grace is prior to all merit; omitting, at this time, the other question concerning the perpetual efficiency of grace, which is admirably treated by him on other occasions. For when he frequently says, that the Lord precedes the unwilling that he may will, and follows the willing that he may not will in vain, he makes him the sole author of the good work. His language on this subject is too explicit to require much argument. “Men labour,” says he, “to discover in our will something that is our own, and not derived from God; and how any such discovery can be made, I know not.” In his first book against Pelagius and Celestius, where he explains that declaration of Christ, “Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me,”632 he says, that “the will is assisted so as to enable it not only to know its duty, but what it knows, also to do.” And thus when God teaches not by the letter of the law, but by the grace of the Spirit, he teaches in such a manner, that whatever each one has learned, he not only sees in knowing it, but desires in willing, and performs in doing.
VIII. And as we are now engaged on the principal point of the argument, let us give the reader a summary of the doctrine, and prove it by a few very clear testimonies of Scripture; and then, that no one may accuse us of perverting the Scripture, let us also show that the truth which we assert to be deduced from the Scripture is not destitute of the support of this holy man; I mean Augustine. For I conceive it is unnecessary to recite in regular order all the passages which might be adduced from the Scriptures in confirmation of our opinion; provided that the selection, which shall be made, prepares a way to the understanding of all the rest, which are frequently to be found. Nor do I think that there will be any impropriety in evincing my agreement with that man, to whose authority the consent of the pious pays a great and merited deference. The origin of all good clearly appears, from a plain and certain reason, to be from no other than from God alone; for no propensity of the will to any thing good can be found but in the elect. But the cause of election must not be sought in men. Whence we may conclude, that man has not a good will from himself, but that it proceeds from the same decree by which we were elected before the creation of the world. There is also another reason, not dissimilar. For since good volitions and good actions both arise from faith, we must see whence faith itself originates. Now, since the Scripture uniformly proclaims it to be the gratuitous gift of God, it follows that it is the effect of mere grace, when we, who are naturally and completely prone to evil, begin to will any thing that is good. Therefore the Lord, when he mentions these two things in the conversion of his people, that he takes away from them their stony heart, and gives them a heart of flesh, plainly declares, that what originates from ourselves must be removed, that we may be converted to righteousness; and that whatever succeeds in its place proceeds from himself. Nor is it only in one passage that he announces this; for he says in Jeremiah, “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for ever.”633 And a little after, “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.” Again in Ezekiel, “I will give them one heart, and 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.”634 He could not more evidently claim to himself and take from us all that is good and upright in our will, than when he declares our conversion to be the creation of a new spirit and of a new heart. For it always follows, that nothing good proceeds from our will till it be renovated; and that after its renovation, as far as it is good, it is from God, and not from ourselves.
IX. And we find the saints have made this the subject of their prayers. Solomon prayed, “May the Lord incline our hearts unto him to keep his commandments.”635 He shows the stubbornness of our heart, which, unless a new bias be given to it, naturally indulges itself in rebellion against the Divine law. The same petition is offered by the Psalmist: “Incline my heart unto thy testimonies.”636 For we should always remark the opposition between the perverse bias of the heart, which inclines it to rebellion, and this correction, which constrains it to obedience. But when David, perceiving himself to be for a time deprived of the direction of grace, prays that God would “create in” him “a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within” him,637 does he not acknowledge that all the parts of his heart are full of impurity, and his spirit warped by a depraved obliquity? and by calling the purity which he earnestly implores, the creation of God, does he not ascribe it entirely to him? If any one object, that the petition itself is a proof of a pious and holy affection, the answer is easy, that although David had already partly repented, yet he compares his former state with that melancholy fall, which he had experienced. Assuming the character, therefore, of a man alienated from God, he properly requests for himself all those things which God confers on his elect in regeneration. Resembling a dead man, therefore, he prays to be created anew, that, instead of being the slave of Satan, he may become the instrument of the Holy Spirit. Truly wonderful and monstrous is the extravagance of our pride. God requires of us nothing more severe than that we most religiously observe his sabbath, by resting from our own works; but there is nothing which we find more difficult, or to which we are more reluctant, than to bid farewell to our own works, in order to give the works of God their proper place. If there were no obstacle arising from our folly, Christ has given a testimony to his graces, sufficiently clear to prevent them from being wickedly suppressed. “I am the vine,” says he, “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.”638 If we cannot bear fruit of ourselves, any more than a branch can bud after it is torn up from the ground, and deprived of moisture, we must no longer seek for any aptitude in our nature to that which is good. There is no ambiguity in this conclusion, “Without me ye can do nothing.” He does not say that we are too weak to be sufficient for ourselves, but reducing us to nothing, excludes every idea of ability, however diminutive. If, being engrafted into Christ, we bear fruit like a vine, which derives the energy of vegetation from the moisture of the earth, from the dew of heaven, and from the benign influences of the sun, I see nothing of our own remaining in any good work, if we preserve entire to God the honour which belongs to him. It is in vain to urge that frivolous subtlety, that the branch already possesses sap, and a fructifying power, and that therefore it does not derive all from the earth, or from the original root, because it contributes something of its own. For the meaning of Christ is clearly that we are as a dry and worthless log, when separated from him; because, independently of him, we have no ability to do good, as he says also in another place: “Every plant, which my heavenly Father has not planted, shall be rooted up.”639 Wherefore the Apostle ascribes all the praise to him in the place already cited. “It is God,” says he, “which worketh in you both to will and to do.”640 The first part of a good work is volition, the next an effectual endeavour to perform it; God is the author of both. Therefore we rob the Lord, if we arrogate any thing to ourselves either in volition or in execution. If God were said to assist the infirmity of our will, then there would be something left to us; but since he is said to produce the will, all the good that is in it, is placed without us. And because the good will is still oppressed by the burden of our flesh, so that it cannot extricate itself, he has added, that in struggling with the difficulties of that conflict, we are supplied with constancy of exertion to carry our volitions into effect. For otherwise there would be no truth in what he elsewhere teaches, that “it is the same God which worketh all in all,”641 which we have before shown comprehends the whole course of the spiritual life. For which reason David, after having prayed that the way of God may be discovered to him, that he may walk in his truth, immediately adds, “Unite my heart to fear thy name.”642 In these words he intimates, that even good men are subject to so many distractions of mind, that they soon wander and fall, unless they are strengthened to persevere. For the same reason, in another passage, having prayed that his steps might be ordered in the word of the Lord, he likewise implores strength for a warfare: “Let not any iniquity have dominion over me.”643 In this manner, therefore, the Lord both begins and completes the good work in us; that it may be owing to him, that the will conceives a love for what is right, that it is inclined to desire it, and is excited and impelled to endeavour to attain it; and then that the choice, desire, and endeavour do not fail, but proceed even to the completion of the desired effect; lastly, that a man proceeds with constancy in them, and perseveres even to the end.
X. And he moves the will, not according to the system maintained and believed for many ages, in such a manner that it would afterwards be at our option either to obey the impulse or to resist it, but by an efficacious influence. The observation, therefore, so frequently repeated by Chrysostom, that “Whom God draws, he draws willing,” we are obliged to reject, being an insinuation that God only waits for us with his hand extended, if we choose to accept his assistance. We grant that such was the primitive condition of man during his state of integrity, that he could incline to the one side or the other; but since Adam has taught us by his own example how miserable free will is, unless God give us both will and power, what will become of us if he impart his grace to us in that small proportion? Nay, we obscure and diminish his grace by our ingratitude. For the Apostle does not teach that the grace of a good will is offered to us for our acceptance, but that he “worketh in us to will;” which is equivalent to saying, that the Lord, by his Spirit, directs, inclines, and governs our heart, and reigns in it as in his own possession. Nor does he promise by Ezekiel that he will give to the elect a new spirit, only that they may be able to walk, but that they may actually walk, in his precepts.644 Nor can the declaration of Christ, “Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me,”645 be understood in any other sense than as a proof of the positive efficacy of Divine grace; as Augustine also contends. This grace the Lord deigns not to give to any person promiscuously, according to the observation commonly attributed, if I mistake not, to Occam, that it is denied to no man who does what he can. Men are to be taught, indeed, that the Divine benignity is free to all who seek it, without any exception; but since none begin to seek it, but those who have been inspired by heavenly grace, not even this diminutive portion ought to be taken from his praise. This is the privilege of the elect, that, being regenerated by the Spirit of God, they are led and governed by his direction. Wherefore Augustine as justly ridicules those who arrogate to themselves any part of a good volition, as he reprehends others, who suppose that to be given promiscuously to all, which is the special evidence of gratuitous election. “Nature,” says he, “is common to all men, but not grace.” He calls it “a transparent subtlety, which shines merely with vanity, when that is extended generally to all, which God confers on whom he chooses.” But elsewhere, “How have you come? by believing. Be afraid, lest while you arrogate to yourself the discovery of the way of righteousness, you perish from the way of righteousness. I am come, you say, by free will; I am come through my own choice. Why are you inflated with pride? Will you know that this also is given to you? Hear him proclaiming, ‘No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.’ ”646 And it incontrovertibly follows, from the words of John, that the hearts of the pious are divinely governed with such effect, that they follow with an affection which nothing can alter. “Whosoever is born of God,” he says, “cannot sin; for his seed remaineth in him.”647 For we see that the neutral, inefficacious impulse imagined by the sophists, which every one would be at liberty to obey or resist, is evidently excluded, where it is asserted that God gives a constancy that is effectual to perseverance.
XI. Concerning perseverance there would have been no doubt that it ought to be esteemed the gratuitous gift of God, had it not been for the prevalence of a pestilent error, that it is dispensed according to the merit of men, in proportion to the gratitude which each person has discovered for the grace bestowed on him. But as that opinion arose from the supposition that it was at our own option to reject or accept the offered grace of God, this notion being exploded, the other falls of course. Though here is a double error; for beside teaching that our gratitude for the grace first bestowed on us, and our legitimate use of that grace, are remunerated by subsequent blessings, they add also, that now grace does not operate alone in us, but only coöperates with us. On the first point, we must admit that the Lord, while he daily enriches and loads his servants with new communications of his grace, perceiving the work which he has begun in them grateful and acceptable, discovers something in them which he blesses with still greater degrees of grace. And this is implied in the following declarations: “Unto every one that hath, shall be given.” And, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.”648 But here two errors must be avoided; the legitimate use of the grace first bestowed must not be said to be rewarded with subsequent degrees of grace, as though man, by his own industry, rendered the grace of God efficacious; nor must it be accounted a remuneration in such a sense as to cease to be esteemed the free favour of God. I grant, then, that this Divine benediction is to be expected by the faithful, that the better they have used the former measures of grace, they shall afterwards be enriched with proportionably greater degrees of it. But I assert that this use also is from the Lord, and that this remuneration proceeds from his gratuitous benevolence. They are equally awkward and unhappy in their use of the trite distinction of operating and coöperating grace. Augustine has used it indeed, but softens it by a suitable definition; that God in coöperating completes what in operating he begins, and that it is the same grace, but derives its name from the different mode of its efficiency. Whence it follows, that he makes no partition of the work between God and us, as though there were a mutual concurrence from the respective exertions of each; but that he only designates the multiplication of grace. To the same purpose is what he elsewhere asserts, that the good will of man precedes many of the gifts of God, but is itself one of their number. Whence it follows, that he leaves nothing for it to arrogate to itself. This is also particularly expressed by Paul. For having said that “it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do,”649 he immediately adds, that he does both “of his own good pleasure,” signifying by this expression that these are acts of gratuitous benignity. Now, to their wonted assertion, that after we have admitted the first grace, our own endeavours coöperate with the grace which follows, I reply, if they mean that, after having been once subdued by the Divine power to the obedience of righteousness, we voluntarily advance, and are disposed to follow the guidance of grace, I make no objection. For it is very certain, that where the grace of God reigns, there is such a promptitude of obedience. But whence does this arise but from the Spirit of God, who, uniformly consistent with himself, cherishes and strengthens to a constancy of perseverance that disposition of obedience which he first originated? But if they mean that man derives from himself an ability to coöperate with the grace of God, they are involved in a most pestilent error.
XII. And to this purpose they falsely and ignorantly pervert that observation of the Apostle, “I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”650 For they understand it in this manner; that because his preference of himself to all others might appear rather too arrogant, he corrects it by referring the praise to the grace of God; but yet so as to denominate himself a coöperator with grace. It is surprising that so many men, not otherwise erroneous, have stumbled at this imaginary difficulty. For the Apostle does not say that the grace of God laboured with him, to make himself a partner in the labour; but rather by that correction ascribes the whole praise of the labour to grace alone. “It is not I,” says he, “that have laboured, but the grace of God which was with me.” They have been deceived by an ambiguity of expression; but still more by a preposterous translation, in which the force of the Greek article is omitted. For if you translate it literally, he says, not that grace was coöperative with him, but that the grace which was with him was the author of all. And the same is maintained by Augustine, though briefly, yet without obscurity, when he thus expresses himself: “The good will of man precedes many of the gifts of God, but not all. But of those which it precedes it is itself one.” Then follows this reason; because it is written, “The God of my mercy shall prevent me.”651 And, “Mercy shall follow me.”652 It prevents the unwilling, that he may will; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. With this agrees Bernard, who introduces the Church, saying, “Draw me unwilling, to make me willing; draw me inactive, to make me run.”