De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 38
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 319A–324E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/38/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

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Chapter 38. Against certain Pelagians who say that God goes before man in the conferring of grace by knocking, and man the very reception of grace by opening and consenting (from himself, however, to the one who knocks), and so in a certain way merits it.

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There are still others who do not dare to resist testimonies so strong. They therefore give to God the external first-fruits of grace and faith and similar goods, but give to men grace itself and faith, together with the other goods of this kind. For they say that God always goes before, by knocking and rousing to grace, faith, and similar goods, and that man follows, by opening and consenting. They say he does this from his own powers, through himself, according to that text of Revelation 3: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me." These people make God the public seller of his own grace, and men the buyers. For they say that he, like a poor little merchant, cries out and knocks at the doors and gates of each person. To the one who opens, they say, he gives his grace in return for the opening, which would, however, more truly be called exchanging, or selling. They also make God a poor little scribe, a hireling, offering his labor in public and writing in the book of life, for a small price (for the opening and the supper), the names of those who open. Thus grace will be from our preceding works, against the 35th of this book, all of whose arguments come back here.

For this Augustine also speaks, in the sermon on the words of the Apostle, as Lombard cites it in the Gloss on that text of Ephesians 2, "By grace you have been saved," etc., "not from works": "Do not think that you received by meriting, you who would merit nothing had you not received. Grace went before your merit: not grace from merit, but merit from grace. For if grace is from merit, you bought it; you did not receive it freely."[n1]

Again, man cannot open, or consent in such matters, from himself, but only from the divine will, as chapter 9 teaches, and as the authorities cited above also prove: "No one can come to me unless my Father has drawn him." According to these people, however, man, though knocked at by God and not yet having the Father, would by opening to the one who knocks more truly draw the Father to himself. And "Without me you can do nothing," therefore not even open; and "we are not sufficient to think anything from ourselves as if from ourselves," therefore not to open by believing, for to think is less than to believe. Although this is evident enough, behold a suitable witness, Augustine, in On the Predestination of the Saints 2, who says: "To believe is nothing other than to think with assent. For it is not he who thinks that believes, since many think precisely so as not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks. What pertains to religion and piety, therefore, is this: if we are not fit to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, then surely we are not fit to believe anything as from ourselves, which we cannot do without thinking; rather our sufficiency, by which we begin to believe, is from God. Hence, just as no one is sufficient for himself to begin or to complete any good work whatever, so that in every good work, both in beginning and in completing, our sufficiency is from God, so no one is sufficient to begin and to complete faith, since faith, if it is not even thought, is nothing; and we are not fit to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. How, too, is it true that 'It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy'; and 'By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God, not from works'? And 'What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?'" This is what the outstanding Doctor and most glorious Martyr Cyprian, wise in humility and truthful in his profession, says in his eleventh Epistle, which is entitled On the Discipline of the Christian Religion, to Quirinus, chapter four:[n2] "We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours." He proves this because in the Gospel according to John it is written, "No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from Heaven," and again in Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?" Blessed Augustine also frequently cites this from him, in On Rebuke and Grace, chapter nineteen, in On the Gift of Perseverance 43, and in On the Predestination of the Saints 3.

Again, although God knocks in this way, he does not by this choose us, since he knocks likewise at the non-elect, but we, by opening, choose him. This is against his own words: "You did not choose me, but I chose you." Hence Augustine, in On the Predestination of the Saints 23: "If they were chosen because they had believed, then surely they had chosen him first, by believing in him so as to deserve to be chosen:

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But he removes this altogether who says, 'You did not choose me, but I chose you.' Those who were chosen undoubtedly chose him themselves, when they believed in him. So he says 'You did not choose me, but I chose you' for no other reason than that they did not choose him so that he would choose them; rather, so that they might choose him, he chose them, because his mercy went before them according to grace, not according to what was owed." And although he knocks in this way, he gives us nothing; rather we, by opening, give him our consent, against that saying of the Apostle: "Who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? For from him, and through him, and in him are all things."

Again, according to what was argued above, this position assigns to us what is better and greater, but to God what is worse and less. For who would doubt that opening is better and more useful for us than knocking, since knocking without opening does not profit but harms? Again, if man can open by his own powers to one who knocks and consent to one who rouses him, then, since an adult unbeliever who has heard enough talk of the faith of Christ and retains in habit or memory what he has heard, can by the same reasoning, according to the opinion of the Philosopher in On the Soul 2, pass from first act to second act,[n3] and understand and actually think such things whenever he wishes, and can consent from himself, therefore he can from himself, without God, acquire for himself grace and faith and everything required, against what has already been laid down.

Again, when God knocks in this way, what does he intend? Either he intends that the one knocked at open, or that he not open, or in a middle way; he intends neither:[n4] if he intends that he open, then by chapter ten everyone knocked at opens, which is not true, for many frequently resist the Holy Spirit of God. If he intends that he not open, then by the same tenth he cannot open. If he intends neither, then by chapter nine he will not be able to open. And even if he did open, that opening would be fortuitous with respect to God, since it would be outside his intention and not contained under divine providence, but would come about from God only permissively, plainly against chapters 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33. This is also against the 22nd of this book.

Again, to open in this way to one who knocks is meritorious. Therefore it proceeds first, in the order of nature, from grace rather than from human will, as was alleged before. Therefore first grace does not follow that opening as a reward for a merit to which it is owed.

Again, this was the error of Pelagius, as is clear from Augustine in On the Predestination of the Saints 25, who says: "The Pelagians themselves think that, once the precepts have been received, we are made holy and immaculate by ourselves, by the choice of a free will. But the Pelagian error is rightly refuted by this testimony, where the Apostle says: 'Therefore we were chosen in Christ, and predestined before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and immaculate.' When he predestined us, therefore, he predestined his own work, by which he makes us holy and immaculate." Augustine himself also at one time erred in this error, as he himself testifies above, in the same work, chapter 4: "When," he says, "I was likewise in error as Pelagius was, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift of God, but is from us in us, and that through it we obtain the gifts of God, I myself was struck and convinced especially by that testimony of the Apostle, 'What do you have that you did not receive?' etc. For I did not think that faith is preceded by grace, except in the sense that we could not believe if the proclamation of the truth did not come first. But that we should consent when the Gospel has been preached to us, I supposed to be our own purpose and from ourselves; an error which several of my little works sufficiently show.

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His book On the Spirit and the Letter seems to point to this error. In its chapter 26 he asks, "Is faith in our power?" After a long discussion he answers in chapter 31 by a distinction, namely that faith is to be attributed partly to the divine gift and partly to us. It is to be attributed to the divine gift for two reasons. First, because faith arises from free choice, which we received from God when we were created. Second, because God acts by persuasions of things seen, so that we may will and so that we may believe, whether outwardly through angelic exhortations,[n5] or through the commandments of the law, or inwardly, where no one has it in his power what comes into his mind. And he adds: But to consent or to dissent is a matter of one's own will. In these ways, then, when God acts with the rational soul that it may believe him (for no one can believe just anything by free choice, if there is no persuasion or calling to which he may give belief), God surely also works the very will to believe in man, and in all things his mercy goes before us. But to consent to the calling of God or to dissent from it, as I said, is a matter of one's own will, which fact not only does not weaken what was said, 'What do you have that you did not receive?' but even confirms it. For the soul cannot receive and have the gifts of which it hears this, except by consenting; and therefore what it has, and what it receives, belongs to God; but to receive and to have belongs certainly to the one receiving and having." Augustine recites the retraction of this error from the first book of his Retractations, chapter 23, in On the Predestination of the Saints 4. For in expounding certain propositions of the Epistle to the Romans he had said: "That we believe is ours; that we work good is his, who gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe." And in retracting this he says: "Which I surely would not have said, if I had already known that faith itself is found among the gifts of God, which are given in the same Spirit. Both, then, are ours because of the choice of the will, and yet both have been given on account of

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the spirit of faith and charity. And what I said a little before, that to believe and to will is ours, but to give to believers the ability to work well is his, is indeed true; but by the same rule both are his, because he himself prepares the will, and both are ours, because it comes about only when we will."

To this also contributes what is alleged, from the thirteenth chapter of On the Predestination of the Saints, in the 35th of this book.[n6] It seems, however, that Augustine in On the Spirit and the Letter did not state the aforesaid answer as a final determination, but rather doubtfully, and inquiring in the manner of a disputation. For in chapter thirty-one he says: "If this discussion suffices to solve that question, let it suffice." And below: "Let him to whom this answer is displeasing seek out more learned men."

Again, then, according to these people, there would be only one calling: that which knocks and rouses, not that which opens and induces and makes consent. This is plainly against Augustine in On the Predestination of the Saints 22, who distinguishes a twofold calling: one, of which it is said, "Many are called"; and another, in which he acts, by which the elect are called and made elect, of which the Apostle says: "The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance,"

that is, without change, stably fixed. "All who belong to this calling are taught by God. None of them can say, 'I believed so that I might be called in this way,' for the mercy of God went before him, by which he was called in this way so that he would believe." Of this calling he also says in chapter 23: "The calling according to the purpose of God, according to that saying of the Apostle in Romans 8, 'To those who love God all things work together for good, to those who are called saints according to his purpose,' according to the purpose, that is, of the divine will, not their own." Hence also in chapter 26, after a great disputation against the Pelagians, he concludes: "Therefore God works in the hearts of men by that calling according to his purpose, of which we have spoken much, not that they may hear the Gospel in vain, but that having heard it they may be converted and believe."

Again, this is against the Apostle, who writes thus in 1 Corinthians 3: "Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth," because, according to the Gloss, these do not give anything from themselves, but God alone

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who gives the growth from within.

Again, Augustine, in On Faith, to Peter 64:[n7] "Hold most firmly, and in no way doubt, that a man whom no adversity hinders can indeed read and hear the words of the holy Law and of the Gospel, but that no one can obey the divine commandments unless God has gone before him by his grace, so that what he hears with the body he may also perceive with the heart, and, having received a good will from God, may wish and be able to do the commandments of God. For neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth, who also works in us both to will and to accomplish, for his good will, that is, his own, not ours," according to the Gloss on Philippians 2. Again, in 1 Thessalonians 2: "We give thanks to God without ceasing, because when you received from us the word of God that you heard, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, who works in you who believe in this very thing." If, however, God did not work otherwise, by knocking and calling, in those who open and believe than in others, the Apostle would not say, "who works in you who believe." Indeed he seems clearly enough to express what God works specially in them, when he says "in this very thing," namely this very thing which you believe. Hence Augustine, treating this word in On the Predestination of the Saints 26, says: "What is the reason why he gives thanks to God for this? Surely it is vain and empty if he gives thanks to someone for what that person did not do. But because this is not vain and empty, God himself, for whose work in this matter he gives thanks, surely did it, since they had perceived from the Apostle the word of God that they heard, since they received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God. Therefore God works in the hearts of men not that they may hear the Gospel in vain, but that having heard it they may be converted and believe. Is not this also what Truth itself says: 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me has drawn him'? It is written in the Prophets: 'And they shall all be taught by God.'[n8] Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me,'" John 6. On this Augustine, in the first part of his work on John, homily twenty-six, says: "All the men of that kingdom will be taught by God; they will not hear from men; and even if they hear from men, yet what they understand is given within, shines within, is revealed within. What do men do who announce from outside? What do I do now when I speak? I put the din of words into your ears. Unless he who is within reveals it, what do I say, or what do I speak? The one outside is the tiller of the tree, the one within is the creator. He who plants and he who waters works from outside; this we do. But neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. This is what is meant by 'They shall all be taught by God.' Who are all? Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned, comes to me. See how the Father draws." The same, in The City of God 15, chapter 6, speaking of the manifold correction of men carried out through men, says: "In this way the citizens of the city of God, pilgrims on this earth and sighing for the peace of the heavenly homeland, are cured. But the Holy Spirit works from within, so that the medicine applied from outside may have some power. Otherwise, even if God himself, using a creature subject to him, in some human form should address himself to human senses, whether these of the body or those which we have most similar to them

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in dreams, and does not rule and move the mind by interior grace, no preaching of truth profits man at all. But God does this, discerning the vessels of wrath from the vessels of mercy, by a dispensation which he himself knows, largely hidden, but nevertheless just."

The venerable Bede also, in book 2 on Luke 4, treating that text of Luke 5, "Master, we have labored all night and caught nothing, but at your word I will let down the net,"[n9] writes thus: "Unless the Lord has built the house, those who build it labor in vain; unless the Lord has enlightened the heart of the hearers, the teacher labors in the night; unless the instruments of disputations have been let down at the word of grace from above, the preacher casts the javelin of his voice in vain, because the faith of the peoples comes not from the wisdom of ordered speech but from the gift of divine calling." Gregory also, in Moralia 11, chapter 5, on that text of Job 12, "If he destroys, there is no one who builds," writes thus: "Almighty God destroys the human heart when he abandons it, and builds when he fills it. Hence it very often happens that when the heart of the hearer, as its faults demand, is not filled by the grace of almighty God, it is stirred in vain from outside by the preacher, because every mouth that speaks is mute,

if he who inspires the words that are heard does not cry out within, in the heart. Hence the Prophet says, 'Unless the Lord has built,' etc. Hence Solomon says, 'Consider the works of God, that no one can correct him whom he has despised.' Nor is it surprising if the preacher is hardly heard by a reprobate heart, since sometimes the Lord himself, in what he speaks, is attacked by the habits of those who resist. For this is why Cain could be warned even by the divine voice and could not be changed: because, as the fault of malice demanded, God had already left the heart to which he spoke his words outwardly as a testimony." The same Gregory, in homily 30 on the Gospel, expounding that text of John 14, "He will teach you all things," writes thus: "Unless the same Spirit is present to the heart of the hearer, the teacher's discourse is idle. Let no one, then, attribute to the man who teaches what he understands from the mouth of the teacher, because unless there is a power within by which he teaches, the teacher's tongue labors in vain outwardly. See, you all hear one voice of the speaker alike, and yet you do not perceive the sense of the voice that is heard alike. Since, then, the voice is not different, why is the understanding of the voice different in your hearts, if not because, in the very fact that the voice of the speaker admonishes in common, there is an inner teacher who teaches some specially concerning the understanding of the voice? Of this anointing of the spirit it is said again through John, 'As his anointing teaches us about all things.' Through the voice, therefore, one is not instructed when the mind is not anointed by the spirit.

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But why do we say these things about the teaching of men, when even the Creator himself does not speak to a man's instruction, if he does not speak to that same man through the anointing of the spirit? Certainly Cain, before he carried out the fratricide in deed, heard 'You have sinned; be still'; but because, as his faults demanded, he was admonished by voice, not by the anointing of the spirit, he could hear the words but scorned to keep them." The Gloss also, on that text of Jeremiah 36, "He spoke with his own mouth," etc., "and I wrote," says: "The grace of the Holy Spirit is necessary also for the hearers. For unless the Spirit is present, the teacher's discourse is idle. We all in the Church hear alike the one voice of the speaker, but we do not all understand alike, but as God's anointing teaches us about all things. The Creator himself also does not speak to a man's instruction, if he does not speak through the anointing of the spirit. For it was said to Cain, 'You have sinned; be still';

but because, with his faults forbidding, he was not anointed, he could hear the words of God but not keep them. So Jehoiakim and his servants could hear the words of God with the ear of the body, but not of the heart." With this Augustine also agrees, in On Rebuke and Grace 10, saying: "Rebuke is salutary when the supernal physician looks upon [him]. For it profits nothing unless he makes the man repent of his sin however much; and who does this, if not he who looked upon the Apostle Peter denying him, and made him weep?" And he shows this opinion throughout the whole book.

Moreover, if man from himself alone opened to God as he thus knocks and calls and offers grace, it would seem that some obstinate people, or others, for various reasons, would by no means open. This is false, since all who, according to the Apostle's saying, have been called saints according to God's purpose, come of necessity, without delay; for otherwise the purpose of the divine will would be frustrated, which chapter 10 does not allow. And so it is said in Mark 3, "He called to himself whom he wished, and they came to him." Nor can it be said that God, in calling the elect, does not purpose or will that they come, but leaves this to their choice. For by chapter 22 either he wills that or its opposite; and not its opposite, because then by chapter 10 they would not come;

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nor would the Apostle and Augustine then specially name them "called according to purpose," namely the purpose of God who calls, as is clear in Romans 8 and in Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, cited above. And even if that chapter 22 did not exist, it would not be fitting that God should knock undetermined as to what he would do and be determined by another, as was argued above; and it would not be fitting because he would then have new willings and would be changed in some way, against chapters 23 and 5; nor would it be fitting in any way that some become holy sons of God and heirs of the kingdom by chance or fortuitously with respect to God, on account of chapter 27 and the others that follow. It does not seem, therefore, that anyone, of whatever sort, however obstinate, who has been called according to God's purpose, resists. Hence Augustine, in On the Predestination

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of the Saints 9, speaking of the grace of this calling, says thus: "This grace, therefore, which is secretly bestowed on human hearts by divine generosity, is rejected by no hard heart; for it is bestowed precisely in order that hardness of heart may first be taken away. When, therefore, the Father is heard within and teaches, he takes away the heart of stone and creates a heart of flesh, as he promised through the prophet's prediction." Again, John 6: "All that the Father gives me will come to me"; that is, every predestined and elect person. But if this depended originally on their free will, not on God's, some of them might perhaps not come. Therefore Bede says there: "These are those whom the Father gives to the Son, whom he makes believe in the Son by a hidden inspiration." Augustine agrees with him in On the Predestination of the Saints 9, saying: "'All that the Father gives me,' etc. What is 'will come to me' but 'will believe in me'? But that it may happen, the Father gives." It also seems that if they believed by themselves, they would rather give themselves to the Son than the Father, who only knocks. For through knocking alone they would in no way have been made part of the Son's lot, but through believing his faith.[n10] To the same effect is what is said below, in the same place:

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"Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me." Therefore the Father teaches them and makes them believe in the Son. Hence, since he had said immediately before, "No one can come to me unless the Father has drawn him," as if explaining that manner of drawing he adds: "It is written in the Prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God'; everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me." It is as if he were saying, "The Father draws to me by teaching in this way." Augustine also expresses this well enough in On the Predestination of the Saints, where he first says: "What is 'Everyone who has heard from the Father,' etc., if not that there is no one who hears from the Father and learns and does not come to me? For if everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes, then surely everyone who does not come has not heard from the Father nor learned. This school, in which the Father is heard and teaches that one may come to the Son, is far removed from the senses of the flesh. There the Son himself also is, because he himself is the Word of the Father, through whom he thus teaches, and he does this not with the ear of flesh but of the heart. The Spirit of the Father and of the Son is present at the same time; for he too does not fail to teach, nor does he teach separately;

Inseparable, indeed, are the works of the Trinity."

Again, if a sinner could by himself believe the preacher and put away his sins, he could by himself distinguish and separate himself from other sinners who hear but do not act in the manner described. This is against the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 4: "Who distinguishes you?" that is, from the lost or those to be lost, as if to say, "God alone." The following text shows this when it says, "What do you have that you did not receive?" etc. Augustine attests this understanding in On Rebuke and Grace, and it is cited there in Lombard's Gloss, which says: "Who distinguishes you from the mass of the lost? No one but God; he alone separates you from the lost. But because a puffed-up man could answer by voice or thought and say, 'My faith distinguishes me, my righteousness, and my prayer,' the Apostle anticipates him, saying, 'What do you have that you did not receive?'" The same, in On the Predestination of the Saints 6, says thus: "The nature in which the possibility of having faith was given to us does not distinguish man from man; but faith itself distinguishes the believer from the unbeliever. And therefore, where it is said, 'Who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive?' anyone who dares to say, 'I have faith from myself, so I did not receive it,' surely contradicts

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the plainest truth. This is not because believing or not believing is not within the choice of the human will, but because in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord; and so it pertains also to faith itself, which lies in the will: 'Who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive?'[n11] And he continues in chapter seven: "Many hear the word of truth, but some believe and others contradict. These, then, wish to believe, those do not wish to: who would not know that? But since the will is prepared by the Lord in some and not prepared in others, one must discern what comes from his mercy and what from his judgment." The same, in On Grace and Free Choice 16: "The Pelagians say that eternal life is rendered to our merits. If they understood our merits in such a way that they also acknowledged them to be gifts of God, this opinion would not be condemnable. But since they so proclaim human merits as to say that man has them from himself, the Apostle most rightly answers: 'Who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?' You have indeed thought along such lines. It is said most truly that God crowns his own gifts, not your merits, if your merits are yours from yourself and not from him;

for if these merits are such, they are evil, and God does not crown evil ones. But if they are good, they are gifts of God, because, as James says, 'Every best gift,' etc.; and John, the forerunner of the Lord, says,[n12] 'A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from above.' Surely the Holy Spirit came from heaven to earth when Jesus ascended on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men." And he continues in chapter seventeen: "If, then, your good merits are gifts of God, God does not crown your merits as your merits, but as his gifts." He pursues this opinion at length in what follows. He also, on that text of Psalm 118 [119], "Reward your servant," etc., says: "Let human pride exalt itself nowhere: God rewards with good rewards his own gifts. But he who now prays, and says, 'Reward your servant, that I may live,' if he were already altogether dead would not pray; rather he received the beginning of good desire from him from whom

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he asks the life of obedience." The same, to Sixtus the Priest, as Peter cites him in Sentences 3, distinction 27:[n13] "When God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing other than his own gifts. Hence the eternal life which is rendered by God at the end for preceding merits, since the very merits for which it is rendered are not from us, but were wrought in us through grace, is itself rightly called grace, because it is given gratuitously, and not gratuitously because it is given to no merits, but because the very merits to which it is given were given through grace."[n14]

Moreover, as can appear from chapter 2, in the genus of openers there is some first, principal opener, in whose power the other openers open, like the other instruments; so that these are as it were possible keys, while that first opener itself uses the key through its power.[n15] For he is that Holy and True One, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens (Revelation 3), as had been foretold in Isaiah 22: "I will place the key of the house of David upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and there shall be no one who shuts; and he shall shut, and there shall be no one who opens." And so the whole Church prays devoutly with the Psalmist: "Lord, my lips

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…"my lips you will open"; and with the Maccabees, "May the Lord open your heart in his law, and in his commandments." The Lord himself, then, opens our hearts, and in general all our powers. In the opening of the ears of the deaf man and the loosing of the bond of the tongue of the same mute man, he deigned to show this by a doubled miracle. He put the fingers of his power into the man's little ears, and with the spittle of his mercy touched his tongue; then, looking up to heaven and sighing, he said, "Effata," which means "Be opened" (Mark 7). According to Bede, in a certain homily, this deaf and mute man signifies the human race, which became deaf and mute in spirit after it despised the divine command, obeyed the persuasion of the serpent, and tasted the forbidden tree. And according to the same author the Gloss there reports: "He looked up to heaven" to teach that from there we must seek speech for the mute, hearing for the deaf, and healing for every infirmity. Again, Acts 14: "God opened to the Gentiles the door of faith." A witness also to this divine opening is that Lydia the dealer in purple , whose heart the Lord opened to attend to what was said by Paul (Acts 16). The Apostle also bears witness to this in Colossians 4, saying, "Be constant in prayer, that God may open to you a door of speech"; and many like passages occur very often in Scripture. On this saying of the Apostle Augustine speaks, in On the Predestination of the Saints 27, in this way: "How is the door of the word opened, unless when the understanding of the hearer is opened so that he believes? And once the beginning of faith has been made, he admits what is preached and discussed for the building up of wholesome teaching, lest through unbelief, with his heart shut, he reject and repel what is said. Hence he says also to the Corinthians: 'A door has been opened to me, great and plain, and the adversaries are many.' What else can be understood here, except that when the Gospel was first preached there through him, many believed, and many proved to be adversaries of that same faith, according to that saying of the Lord: 'No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father'; and 'To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom; to them it is not given'? The door, then, was opened in those to whom it was given, while the adversaries were many among those to whom it was not given. And the same Apostle says: 'When I came to Troas for the Gospel of Christ, and a door was opened to me in the Lord,' etc., 'taking leave of them, I went out into Macedonia.'"

[324D–324E]
"Whom did he take leave of, if not those who had believed, in whose hearts, that is, the door was opened for him as he preached the Gospel?" And after a short digression he adds: "But let us return to the opening of the door, by which the Apostle signifies the beginning of faith in those who hear. What does it mean, 'praying together that God may open to you a door of the word,' if not the plainest demonstration that even the beginning of faith is a gift of God? For it would not be asked of him in prayer, unless it were believed that it is brought about by him. This gift of heavenly grace had come down upon that dealer in purple, of whom, as Scripture says in the Acts of the Apostles, 'God had opened her mind, and she attended to what was said by Paul.' For thus she was called, so that she would believe. For God does what he wills in the hearts of men, either by helping or by judging, so that even through them is fulfilled what his hand and counsel predestined to be done." It seems to me, then, better and safer to entrust the whole governance of our doors to such a doorkeeper: one who is never weighed down by sleep, deceived by any illusion, or enticed by any corruption, nor overcome by any power, and who, in opening or shutting, can never err in the least. The alternative is to entrust the whole to ourselves, or part to him and part to ourselves, who are powerless, foolish, and corrupt, and who scarcely ever open or shut without erring. Yet this is not so that we may give ourselves over to drowsiness and idleness, but so that under his happy governance, neither beyond it nor otherwise, we may always attend most watchfully to the works of grace [n16]. Hence Augustine, in On the Good of Perseverance, 9 [n17]: "We live more securely if we give everything to God, rather than entrusting ourselves partly to him and partly to ourselves." To him, therefore, I entrust myself wholly, with all devotion, and to his most gracious grace I submit myself entirely. And if they object that passage of Apocalypse 3, "If anyone opens," etc., and that passage of the beloved knocking, "Open to me, my sister" (Song of Songs 5), the reply is the same as was given in chapter 35 for similar texts: by texts of this kind Free Choice is stirred up, and it does not follow from this that it could open by its own powers alone, any more than it could fulfil all the other divine commands which are given in the same way.

NOTES

1. The Latin plays on gratia ("grace") and gratis ("freely, for nothing"): "if grace is from merit, you bought it; you did not receive it gratis." English cannot keep the shared root; "freely" is chosen here, and "gratuitously" is used where the jingle becomes the argument (324A, note 14). The passage is Augustine's sermon on the words of the Apostle, as quoted in Lombard's gloss on Eph 2:8–9.
2. Cyprian's Ad Quirinum (the Testimonia), III.4. Savile's "eleventh Epistle … On the Discipline of the Christian Religion" is this work, so entitled in some manuscripts. The gloss on the title is the medieval one; the Cyprian text itself is not an epistle numbered eleven.
3. "First act" is the possession of knowledge as a settled disposition (habitus, memory); "second act" is its actual exercise. The Philosopher: De anima II.1 and 5.
4. I translate Neutrum intendit as printed. It reads like a repetition of the third horn of the dilemma ("or in a middle way"), which Bradwardine then takes up in its own right ("If he intends neither…"). The three cases that follow settle the sense.
5. The 1618 print reads Angelicas ("angelic"). Augustine's De spiritu et littera 34.60 has evangelicas ("of the Gospel"), which would be the expected sense. The translation follows the print.
6. tricesimum quintum huius allegat: the accusative object of allegat is "the thirty-fifth of this [book]". I take it as "what is alleged in the 35th chapter of this work from chapter 13 of De praedestinatione sanctorum". The construction is loose, and the sense is only that this citation too bears on the point.
7. De fide ad Petrum is the work of Fulgentius of Ruspe. It was commonly ascribed to Augustine in the Middle Ages, and Savile's margin follows that ascription.
8. docibiles Dei (Jn 6:45; Is 54:13): Latin docibilis is properly "teachable", but the Vulgate phrase means "taught by God", and Augustine and Bradwardine use it in that sense.
9. Savile's "2. super Luc. 4." is left as printed; the lemma quoted is Luke 5:5. The numerals presumably give Bede's book and chapter, or are a misprint for the Gospel reference.
10. per credere fidem eius: so printed. The most natural reading is "by believing his faith", i.e. the faith that is his (Christ's). It could also be read as "faith in him". I translate literally.
11. The quotation from De praed. sanct. is elliptical: ideo ad ipsam quoque fidem… pertinet has no stated subject. Augustine's sense is that the Apostle's words ("Who distinguishes you?") apply also to faith. I keep the Latin construction rather than supply a subject.
12. The Latin repeats the verb: Omne datum optimum etc. dicit, et Iohannes praecursor Domini… I translate "says" once for James and once for John.
13. Augustine's letter to the priest Sixtus (Ep. 194), as cited by Peter Lombard, Sentences III, d. 27.
14. See note 1. Here gratia / gratis carries the argument: eternal life is called "grace" because it is given gratis, and it is gratis not by being given to no merits but because the merits themselves are gifts.
15. claues possibiles… ipsum vero potentia vtens claue: the other openers are "possible" (that is, potential) keys; the first opener alone uses the key through its own power. potentia could also be read "potentially", but the contrast with possibiles favours "through its power".
16. The print reads operibus gratia, which cannot be construed as it stands. Taking it as a misprint for gratiae ("the works of grace"), I translated the evident sense. The keyed text agrees with the print, so this is not logged as an erratum.
17. Savile's title de bono perseuerantiae is the older title of Augustine's De dono perseverantiae. I believe the quoted sentence stands in chapter 6 of that work (§12), not in a chapter 9; the number is Savile's and I have left it as printed. Bradwardine's wording, nos illi ex parte, et nobis ex parte committimus, is slightly different from the usual text of Augustine.