De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 40
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, 364A–370D; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/40/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

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CHAPTER 40. That grace, which is a habit freely given by God, together with the human will, is properly the efficient cause of every good and meritorious act of its own.

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After this, the grace of God with me will show, as I hope, that grace is properly the efficient cause of every good act [n1]. I mean grace freely given, which is a habit of the soul poured into it freely by God, according to the distinction concerning grace made in 25, of which the preceding chapters also spoke. For if grace were not properly the efficient cause of a good act, a man could fulfil God's commands from his own natural powers without it, and complete any good act, contrary to what was just shown. If one who has grace brings about each of his acts with grace contributing nothing whatever, then he could do so equally with grace removed; for neither the total efficient cause nor even a partial one would be removed. Likewise, if grace or charity does not make the act of human love by which he fulfils the commandment of love, then by the same reasoning faith and hope, which are infused habits, do not make the acts of believing and hoping either, as is clear from what was cited in the preceding chapter. A man could therefore, from himself and his natural endowments, and from what he has naturally acquired, believe, hope, love, and do whatever he ought. That is the manifest error of Pelagius, and contrary to what was just shown.

Likewise, the theological and supernatural virtues are no less effective in bringing about their like acts than the natural virtues, moral and intellectual; yet all of these properly bring about their own acts. For who doubts that natural forms and virtues bring about their acts? And who does not know that moral virtues bring about moral acts, and intellectual virtues likewise such acts? Why else would those lacking these virtues not act in the same way as those who have them, since no effective principle is wanting to them? Hence the Philosopher too, in Ethics 2, chapters 1, 2 and 3 [n2], shows that moral virtues are generated from works, and that, once generated, they generate like works. In chapter 3, after a manifold demonstration of this, he speaks thus: "It is supposed, then, that virtue is of such a kind as to be productive of the best acts concerning pleasures and pains, and vice the contrary." And at the end, concluding, he says: "Since, then, virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains; and since it is increased by the things from which it comes about, and destroyed when they are not done in like manner; and since it operates concerning the things from which it comes about—let this much be said." He also defines, above in the first book, chapter seven [n3], the happy man as one operating according to perfect virtue, and he hints at this very often in many other places.

Likewise grace or charity makes the intention right, lifts up and raises the will, as was shown in the preceding chapter, just as in moral matters moral virtue does, as the Philosopher testifies there, and as is cited more fully in 34 of this book. Likewise virtue, and above all the highest virtue, namely grace or charity, is not less effective than vice; but vice brings about evil acts, and therefore grace or charity brings about good acts. To say nothing of vices morally acquired, who does not know, who does not feel, what sort of acts one radical vice brings about: the law of the members, the tyrant of nature, the tinder of sin, the concupiscence or concupiscibility of our flesh, which the Doctors also commonly call original sin? Our all too frequent and all too violent experience bears witness. The Apostle bears witness: "I am carnal," he says, "sold under sin; for what I do I do not understand. For I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do. But now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and making me captive in the law of sin," Rom. 7. The Glosses and the expositions of the saints expounding this passage bear witness. Almost the whole of the 40th distinction of the second book of Lombard's Sentences bears witness [n4], where he also plainly holds this opinion and confirms it from Augustine. For he says: "Original sin is called the tinder of sin, namely concupiscence, or concupiscibility, which is called the law of the members, or the languor of nature, or the tyrant that is in our members, or the law of the flesh." Hence Augustine, in the book On the Baptism of Infants: "There is in us concupiscence, which must not be permitted to reign; and there are its desires, which are actual concupiscences, which are the weapons of the Devil, which come from the languor of nature;

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but that languor is the tyrant who stirs up evil desires." And below: "By the name of concupiscence he signified not the act of desiring but the depraved vice, when he called it the law of the flesh." Hence the same Augustine, in the Treatise on the Words of the Apostle, says: "There is always a fight in the body of this death, because the concupiscence itself with which we were born cannot be ended as long as we live; it can be diminished daily, but it cannot be ended. And what is the concupiscence with which we were born? It is a vice, to be sure, which makes an infant capable of desiring, and renders an adult desirous." Since cupidity is so combative, so effective, and so manifoldly active, how does charity restrain it, diminish it and overcome it, if it does absolutely nothing, if it moves nothing at all, if it is utterly idle? Not so, the Apostle does not so think, in 1 Cor. 13: "Charity," he says, "is patient, is kind, is not envious, does not act perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice over iniquity," as though he were plainly saying: it does not do these things but their contraries. So he immediately adds: "but rejoices together with the truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Augustine too, in On the Four Virtues of Charity, beautifully shows that it tolerates all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Hence among other things, in the person of Abraham, to whom he assigns the second of these virtues, he says: "The virtue of charity abiding in me believes all things, and does, and says. For I hear it speaking within, to the heart, without the noise of a voice." And below: "O charity, you who can do so much in this fight of mortality, still anxious, how much will you be able to do in that perfect peace, secure?" The same Augustine, in the Enchiridion, next to last: "Cupidity is diminished as charity grows, until it comes here to so great a magnitude that none greater can be; but there, who could set out how great charity will be, where there will be no cupidity for it to overcome by restraining? When health will be supreme, when there will be no struggle of death?" The same, to Anastasius, as Peter cites in Sentences 2, dist. 26: "Without the Spirit the will of man is not free. For since it is conquered by desires, it is not free for the good unless it has been set free; and it is not set free unless charity is poured out in hearts through the Spirit. The will is not free unless grace sets it free through the law of faith; that is, it is not free without faith working through love, and that will is sufficiently and truly good. For the fruit that does not spring from the root of charity is not good; but if faith working through love is present, delight in the good comes about."

He also, in On the Spirit and the Letter, 13, says: "That fruit is not good which does not spring from the root of charity." And, as Peter recites in Sentences 3, dist. 31, he speaks thus: "The root of all evils is cupidity, and the root of all goods is charity. But what sort of root is charity? Living or dead? Not dead; that is plain. And how can it be living, if it sprouts or produces no living work or fruit?" The same, in the first sermon on Psalm 31, treating that saying of the Apostle in Rom. 13, "The fullness of the law is love," or charity, according to another translation, speaks thus: "Does charity permit you to do anything evil to him whom you love? But perhaps all you do is no evil, and no good either. Therefore charity does not permit you not to render to him whom you love whatever you can. Is not that charity which prays even for enemies? Therefore he does not desert a friend who wishes his enemy well. And so, if faith is without love, it will be without work. But lest you think much about the work of faith, add to it hope and love, and do not wonder what you will do; for love itself cannot be idle." Gregory agrees with this, in Homily 27 on the Gospel, expounding that saying of John 15, "This is my commandment, that you love one another": "Every commandment is of love alone, and all are one commandment, because whatever is commanded is made firm in charity alone. For as the many branches of a tree come forth from one root, so many virtues are generated from one charity, and a branch of good work has nothing of greenness if it does not remain in the root of charity. The Lord's precepts, therefore, are both many and one: many by the diversity of work, one in the root of love." He also says below, Homily 30: "The love of God is never idle; for it works great things, if it is; but if it refuses to work, it is not love." And Peter, in Sentences 2, dist. 26, says that grace itself is not idle, but merits to be increased, that once increased it may merit also to be perfected. Again the Apostle, to the Galatians 5, says that faith works through charity; and again in 1 Cor. 15: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me has not been empty, but I have laboured more abundantly than all of them: yet not I, but the grace of God with me."

Who, then, would say that charity or grace does absolutely nothing? If anyone thinks so, let him read the books and expositions of Augustine and the other Doctors on these authorities, and on very many other similar ones, and he will cease to think so. The very many authorities cited in the preceding chapters bear the same witness. Among them, those of Augustine in the Hypognosticon 60 [n5], in On the Gift of Perseverance 48, 36 of this book, and in To Simplicianus 1, 24, and that of Anselm's On Concord and On Truth, were touched on and set out in the preceding chapter. And who, having entered even a little way into the outer court of Theology, would be ignorant of that very common division concerning operating and cooperating grace, when nearly all the Doctors and their disciples affirm it most frequently? Hence Peter too, in the second book of the Sentences, Distinctions 5, 26, 27 and 29, carefully expounds it. He also, in distinction 25, last, speaking of the liberty of nature and of grace, says: "The Apostle notes both liberties when, in the person of a man not redeemed, he says, 'To will is present

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with me, but to accomplish I do not find,' as if he were saying: I have the liberty of nature, but I do not have the liberty of grace; therefore the perfection of the good is not in me. For the will of man, which he has by nature, cannot be raised to effectively willing the good, or to fulfilling it in deed, unless it is freed and helped through grace so that it may complete it. For, as the Apostle says, 'It is not of the one who wills to will, nor of the one who runs to run'—that is, to act—'but of God who has mercy,' who works in us both to will and to work the good. The will or work of man does not summon his grace; rather grace itself comes before the will, preparing it to will the good, and helps the prepared will lest it will in vain, that is, so that it may complete." And in dist. 26 he adds immediately: "This is operating and cooperating grace. For operating grace prepares the will of man to will the good; cooperating grace helps lest it will in vain." Hence Augustine, in the book On Grace and Free Choice: "By cooperating, God completes in us what he began by operating, because he himself works, beginning, that we may will; and he cooperates, completing, with those who will. That we may will, then, he works; when we will, and so will that we complete, he cooperates with us; yet without him, whether working that we may will, or cooperating when we will, we can do nothing in the good works of piety."

And Peter adds: "From these words it is sufficiently clear which grace is operating and which cooperating. For operating grace is that which comes before the will (for by it the will of man is freed and prepared, so that it may be good and will the good effectively); but cooperating grace follows the already good will, helping it." Further on he also cites Augustine, in On the Predestination of the Saints, saying that grace is not given according to other merits, but brings about all good merits. In the twenty-seventh distinction too he writes thus: "Some, not unlearnedly, teach that virtue is a good quality or form of the mind, which informs the soul, and is not itself a motion or affection of the mind; but by it free choice is helped to be moved and raised toward the good; and thus from virtue and free choice a good motion or affection of the mind is born." Straightaway he says that it is likewise with grace and the human will. And below: "In meriting good things the position of principal cause is attributed to grace, because the principal cause of good merits is grace itself, by which free choice is aroused, and the will of man is healed and helped to be good. That will is itself also a gift of God, and a merit of man—indeed of grace, because it is principally from grace, and is grace." Hence Augustine, to Sixtus the priest: "What is the merit of man before grace, when it is grace alone that makes in us every good merit of ours?" For from grace, as has been said, which comes before and heals the choice of man, and from that choice itself, a good affection, or good motion of the mind, is procured in the soul, and this is man's first good merit. For example, from faith, virtue, and man's choice there is generated in the mind a certain good and remunerable motion, namely believing itself; so too from charity and free choice there arises another motion, very good, namely loving. So is it to be understood of the other virtues. The same Peter says [n6], in Sentences 3, dist. 36, that charity is the mother of all virtues. But what sort of mother? Barren or fruitful? And how barren, when she is a mother? But if she is fruitful, how does she bear nothing? Here, however, many friends of the Pelagians try to respond in manifold ways. Yet they all agree in this one thing: that grace, a created virtue, or charity, does not truly and properly bring about good acts as regards the substance of the acts. Either it brings about nothing at all, or only in some improper and transferred way [n7].

Some, for instance, say that the created virtue, grace or charity, in no way brings about good acts, but only uncreated grace and charity, which is God and the Holy Spirit of God; and so they understand all the authorities that say that grace or charity brings about any act. But even if these men could somehow evade by this means certain of the authorities set out above, they cannot evade the arguments. Indeed any Catholic who looks with sound eyes at some such Authorities on the surface of the letter, and at others a little deeper within, can at once perceive another meaning, namely about created grace and charity. Hence Peter too, in Sentences 2, dist. 27, among other things cited above, says: "When good merits are said to be from grace and to begin from it, either grace freely giving is understood, that is, God, or rather grace freely given, which comes before the will of man (for it would be no great thing if these merits were said to be from God, from whom are all things); but rather his grace freely given is understood, from which good merits begin. And when they are said to be from grace alone, free choice is not excluded, since there is no merit in an adult man that does not come through free choice; but in meriting good things the position of principal cause is attributed to grace, because the principal cause of good merits is grace itself, by which free choice is aroused, and the will of man is healed and helped to be good." Others say that grace is said to bring about a good act because it arouses the will so that the will itself may bring about the good act. But these too are reasonably convicted by the arguments set out above. Likewise, if grace arouses the will, it moves the will in some way, and does some act; and if it does this by coming before the will, which is not yet acting, why can it not, by like reasoning, co-act the meritorious act with the will when the will is acting? Who indeed, unless

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ungrateful to grace, will give to the grace of God the worse act, or the less good, and to its own natural powers the better? For who does not know that the meritorious act is incomparably better than the bare arousal to it, with which it is consistent to merit nothing—indeed, to sin? But what was alleged in the earlier chapters does not permit this. Moreover, a man or an angel could will and do without such an arouser, since it contributes nothing, either here or there; and therefore could fulfil all God's commands without grace, which is the error of Pelagius, as the preceding chapter recited. Moreover, the human will could likewise be aroused by something that is not grace: by reason, for example, by moral virtue, by a teacher, by natural impulse or inclination, and by various other things; so these other things, without grace, suffice for doing the commands. According to this, too, the created will would be a more principal cause of merit than grace; for the will principally, indeed singly, brings about merit, while grace only arouses to acting. But this is plainly against the Apostle cited above: "I have laboured more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me."

For how else is this to be understood than as "not I principally and grace instrumentally," but the reverse? The saying of Lombard cited above against the immediately preceding response also plainly attests this. Others judge that grace makes good acts not effectively but only formally, as whiteness makes a subject white, and the soul makes a thing animate, and any form its formed thing. But these views can be refuted by the arguments and authorities set out above. Further, grace, which is an infused habit, is not the natural and essential form of the act of willing of the one in grace [n8], just as no habit is the form of its own act. For the act is more actual than the habit; it is neither the natural subject of the habit nor composed of habit and act [n9] as of form and matter, but is simple. Nor is grace the material cause of the good act, namely of due love of God and neighbour, nor the final cause, as no one is ignorant; nor the efficient cause, as these men say. So a man could perform that act, and fulfil the commands, without grace, from his natural powers alone, as Pelagius raved; for no required cause would be lacking. But if anyone says that grace is an improper form, and in a way actual [n10] of the good act, namely because it informs the will performing that act, he falls into the sea of Pelagius spoken of above [n11].

He must also say, consequently, that every act proceeding from such a will is good and graced, because it is similarly informed by grace. This is not true of the acts of infants, nor of all the acts of adults, since it is not true of indifferent acts nor of venial sins. By the same reasoning every act of a wise man would be wise, or wisely done, an act of a temperate man temperate, or temperately done, and in the same way with all the virtues and vices, which no one doubts to be false. These men also posit grace as "empty," against the Apostle, that is, idle, as the Gloss explains; so they themselves appear empty and void of grace. Still others think that grace is said to do good acts because it binds and restrains resisting concupiscence, and with concupiscence bound the graced will produces graced acts. But the arguments and authorities set out above convict these men too. How, moreover, does grace bind and restrain resisting concupiscence if it does absolutely nothing, as was touched on above? Or if grace does anything toward the repression of concupiscence, why not toward the production of a good act, by like reasoning, as was argued above against the second response?

Moreover, men established in grace sometimes have concupiscence so strong, and at times stronger than men destitute of grace, as the lives of many saints show, and St Paul especially, in 1 Cor. 12, plainly concerning himself [n12]. Therefore such men destitute of grace can do good acts and fulfil God's commands, just as such men established in grace can. Hence these too, like the former, are swallowed up by the whirlpool of the Pelagian sea. The same can be shown in another way. To the degree that concupiscence is bound and quieted by grace, to that degree it could be quieted by moral virtues, by medicine, by natural alteration, and in some by their own natural complexion. Such men could therefore, by the power of nature, without grace of this kind, keep all of God's commands; so these men too slip back into the sea of Pelagius. To the same point: if one in grace, whose concupiscence is only a little repressed by grace, can produce a great act and great merit, then one not in grace, hindered somewhat more by a somewhat greater concupiscence, can also produce a like act, though perhaps proportionally smaller, and perhaps better in proportion as it is more difficult, as the preceding chapter argued. For similar unequal causes produce similar unequal effects. Hence the Philosopher, in On the Heavens 3, 72 [n13], rejecting those who posit that fire burns because of angles, that is, because of the sharpness of the angles, says: "If fire heats and burns because of angles, all the elements will be heat-producing, but perhaps one more than another; for all have angles: for instance that of eight bases, and that of twelve bases, and the pyramid, and for Democritus the sphere as well, an angle being what burns; they differ, therefore, in that they do so more and less." Moreover, on this view the angel and man in the state of innocence before the fall would not at all have needed grace in order to merit; for he did not have resisting concupiscence, the opposite of which the preceding chapter was showing. Hence Augustine too, Enchiridion 87: "That immortality," he says, "in which human nature was able not to die, it lost through free choice; this one, in which it will not be able to die, it will receive through grace, which, had it not sinned, it was to receive

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through merit," though even then it would not have been without grace, nor could any merit have existed without it [n14]. For even if sin lay in free choice alone, free choice nevertheless was not sufficient for retaining justice, unless divine help were supplied through participation in the unchanging good. Peter too proves and holds the same in Sentences 2, dist. 5, 24 and 29. Others opine that grace is said to make good acts because, by marking the soul with a character for the Lord and clothing it in the Lord's garment, it makes the soul terrible to the adverse power, so that the adversary does not dare to attack it, as he does another soul that lacks these; and thus such a graced soul can freely do graced works. But these, like the last, will be driven into the pit of destruction, into the sea of Pelagius. Others judge that grace is said to bring about good acts because it frees and justifies man from sin, which had hindered him from doing good acts. But these men, together with their father Pelagius, will be refuted by the principal arguments and authorities, and also by those set out against the fourth response. The Pelagians are also specially reprobated on account of this opinion. For they posit, as Augustine recites in On Grace and Free Choice 16, that only that grace by which sins are forgiven us is not given according to our merits, but that which we await at the end, namely eternal life, is given according to our merits; for they understand our merits to exist for us from ourselves, not from the grace of God nor from God. Hence Augustine, after reciting this error of the Pelagians, adds: "They must be answered thus: if they understood our merits in such a way that they also recognized them to be gifts of God, this opinion would not need to be reproved. But since they so proclaim human merits as to say that man has them from himself, the Apostle most rightly answers: 'For who will distinguish you? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?' Quite rightly it is said to one thinking such things: God crowns his own gifts, not your merits. If your merits are yours from yourself and not from him, they are evils that God crowns; but if they are good, they are God's gifts, namely through his grace freely given." In the Council of Milevis too, held against the Pelagians, at which Augustine was present, as is clear from Epistle 134 among his epistles, and which is found in the Canon, De consecratione, distinction 4 [n15], it was concordantly decreed that whoever says that the grace of God by which we are justified through Jesus Christ our Lord avails only for the remission of sins already committed, and not as a help that they may not be committed, is anathema. There are also many other little twisted responses, which by what has been set out here and in the earlier chapters will easily be set straight, with the help of God's grace, or rather with it working as the principal agent.

After this, however, an objection is raised against these points. For if grace properly brings about the graced act, the graced man will act more easily and more strongly than the ungraced. For the one has the great help of grace, the other none; and the opposite of this, as it seems, the most ungrateful sinners show by experience. Likewise, let A be one whole meritorious act, done by grace and the human will; let B be the part of A done by grace; and let C be the part of it done by the human will alone. Therefore C is meritorious, or A is so only on account of C, because C alone is done by the free will of man; for in the will all merit consists. Likewise, let a man set before himself a definite degree of love, which he would have without cooperating grace. Then, if he loves with grace cooperating, he will love beyond that degree; he will therefore love at least this intensely, but violently and unwillingly, and hence not meritoriously. So grace, if it is posited as active, removes merit and freedom of choice. Likewise, grace and the human will are either equally powerful or not equally. If equally, each can prevent the other from doing anything, and so grace could violently keep a man from sinning, and from willing this or that; and so everyone having such grace would be finally confirmed. If not equally, then either grace is the more powerful or the will. If grace, the absurdity just mentioned returns; grace can also make the will will unwillingly, and hold it unwilling in the act of willing. If the will is more powerful than grace, the will can be weakened, or grace strengthened, until it is equally powerful or more powerful; and if this is posited, the difficulty is posited again. Likewise, since grace is an irrational agent, and does not act from election, if it acts it necessarily always acts to the utmost of its power, as far as it can; so whatever action of whatever species or degree grace, or the graced man, performs once, he performs always. Nor does it seem in accord with reason that an irrational agent should do a free act, and freely, rather than by necessity of nature. Likewise, it would then not be in man's power to keep the commandments, nor to be saved, since it is not in his power to have such grace, which is necessarily required. Many similar objections could also be raised; but when these are solved, the solution of the rest like them will be clear, God's grace revealing it. These ungrateful objections [n16], however, must be answered with the help of grace. To the first, then: what theologian doubts that charity and grace make the yoke of the Lord sweet and his burden light, when so many Doctors teach this, in so many places? Isaiah, God's secretary, saw this as well, who says: "He who gives strength to the weary, and multiplies might and strength for those who are not. Boys will faint and labour, and young men will fall in weakness. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will take wings like eagles, they will run and not labour, they will walk and not faint," Isa. 40. Wherefore

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concerning the wicked, in the person of the wicked, the Wise Man speaks thus: "We are wearied in the way of iniquity and perdition, and we have walked difficult ways; but the ways of the Lord we have not known"; and Scripture offers many similar sayings besides. But for a more sufficient and more subtle solution of this objection it must be noted that, according to what was shown in the preceding chapter, the proper operation of charity and grace is to love God dearly and freely above all things, finally for his own sake, and so to do all the rest for God's sake. No one lacking charity and grace can have such love and operation; but as long as he lacks them, he necessarily loves most of all his own advantage and himself, and for the sake of his own advantage and himself does all the rest as final end. The love and operation of charity or grace, then, that is, of one with charity and grace, proceeding from charity and grace, differs in species from the love and operation of one without charity and grace. For just as the objects of loves, the things finally loved, differ in species, so do their proper loves; so it is also in proper and distinct knowledge and vision. Otherwise all willings and loves would be of the same species [n17]

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most specific, and all cognitions and visions likewise; and so for the other powers, and for any proper operations whatsoever. Hence the Philosopher too, in Ethics 8, 3 [n18]: "Since there are three species of the lovable, namely the useful, the pleasant, and the honorable or virtuous, there must be three species of lovings and of friendships." For he says, "these differ from one another in species; and so the lovings and friendships are equal in number to the lovable things." And below, in 7: "There is another species of friendship, which is according to superiority: for example, that of a father to a son, and generally of an elder to a younger, of a husband to a wife, and of every ruler to the ruled. These differ from one another; for it is not the same for parents toward children and for rulers toward the ruled, nor even for a father toward a son and a son toward a father, nor for a husband toward a wife and a wife toward a husband. For the virtue and the work of each of them is different, and different too are the reasons for which they love; so the lovings and the friendships are different." Anselm also, in On Free Choice, 7 [n19], having distinguished in the will between the natural instrument by which we will and its use or work, adds: "That which is the work is as manifold as the things we will are many, and as often as we will; just as sight, which is the work and is called vision, is as numerous as the things we see are numerous, and as many times as we see."

The same can also be shown briefly, in theological terms, as follows. If one not in grace [n20] could love and do anything with a love and a doing of the same species as that of one in grace, he could likewise fulfil all the commandments without grace, as the one in grace does; and that is the error of Pelagius, as the preceding chapter makes clear. The love, then, of one in grace proceeding from grace, and that of one not in grace, differ in species. Yet one in grace can sometimes love and act not from grace but from natural friendship, from affection for his own advantage, from desire for what is pleasant and useful to himself, performing an indifferent act or even a venial sin. So the objection [n21] either compares an act of one in grace proceeding from grace with any act whatever of one not in grace, and then they differ in species, and no experience shows that one not in grace can perform so strongly an act of the same species as the act of one in grace proceeding from grace; so it does not stand. Or it compares an act of one in grace not proceeding from grace with a similar act of one not in grace, of the same species; and then they can indeed act equally strongly, because grace neither compels nor helps the one in grace there; so neither does this objection stand.

As for the second, it must be known that it in no way goes through, because in the same way it could be shown that God does not produce the meritorious act of the will, the opposite of which is clear from the third chapter of this book, and the fourth, and many other chapters touched on before. It also imagines one falsehood. For if A has diverse parts, as he does have, then grace and will alike produce the whole of him and each part of him, not separately but jointly, not successively but simultaneously, as God and the will do; just as two men pull a boat. Hence Bernard, On Grace and Free Choice, the twenty-third [n22]: "To this end," he says, "grace goes before free choice, that henceforth it may cooperate with it; yet in such a way that what was begun by grace alone is equally completed by both, so that it works in combination, not singly, and together, not in turn, through each individual effect; not partly grace and partly free choice, but each performs the single works as a whole in one undivided act: the whole this one, and the whole that one; but as the whole is in the one, so the whole is from the other." The third is dismissed like the second: for in the same way it could be shown that God does not produce the free and meritorious act of the will. This too is resolved over and above, nonetheless, like the first: for a man cannot, without grace, love in any degree with a love of the same species as the love proceeding from grace. But to dig up its root, I say that even if one not in grace could love in the same species as one in grace from grace, the objection would not stand. For grace would not make him will violently and unwillingly, or so intensely; rather, from one willing and resisting, it would make one freely willing [n23] and voluntarily loving; for this is proper to grace, as what has been set out above about grace shows. The conversion of St Paul makes this especially clear, and so does that of the man whom divine grace converted at the prayers of St Stephen, founder of the Grandmontine order. For William of Auvergne reports, in the third part of his Tripartite, 22 [n24], in this manner: for a certain man of this kind, who even forbade that prayer be made for him, and who said that he did not want in any way to obtain the grace of repentance or conversion, though he was unwilling and resisting, Saint Stephen made prayer for him,

[370A–370D]
the founder of the Grandmont order, together with his community; and he was heard. For while they were praying for him, that man came to them announcing how he had been visited, and, making confession of his sins with much devotion and tears, did penance. It [n25] also errs gravely in that it ignores the refutation. For how do they conflict, that someone now wills one thing and earlier did not will it, or willed its opposite? What conflict is there? Or why does such a man will unwillingly? For example, suppose that he resolved for himself yesterday that today he would feed a single poor man, and that today, visited with a richer grace, he wants to feed two, and does feed them: what violence is there? What conflict between these things? It also seems very probable that a man can, with grace and from it, will however remissly. So a man can, from grace, love in as great a degree as he resolved for himself, and as he would have had without grace, and even in a lesser degree. The fourth errs like the third and the second: for in this way it could be proved that God does not produce our free acts, and also that the grace of confirmation would do violence to the will

of the one confirmed, as regards not sinning and his beatific act; and yet this can be resolved as the third was. The fifth, if it proved anything, would prove likewise that neither the end, nor its species in the soul, nor the cognition of it moves one who wills, nor in any way brings about the free act of the will; against what was set out in chapters 19 and 21 of this book. And who that has even slightly entered philosophy has not read that chapter of the third book of On the Soul, "On the Mover" [n26], where it is sufficiently shown that imagination is one cause moving animals, and the intellect men, in locomotion? How is this to be understood, except that imagination is one efficient cause of appetite in them, and the intellect (that is, the species of the object in the intellect, or the act of understanding, the intellection itself) is likewise one efficient cause of will in these [n27]; by which and through which animals and men are moved in locomotion, as is evidently gathered from the course of the text? Who does not see that course of argument in Metaphysics 12, where the Philosopher shows that the first mover, which is God, moves, as the new translation says [n28], as the desirable and the intelligible move, themselves unmoved, and as the loved; and, as the translation which Averroes expounds says, moves as the desired and the understood

and as the loved? On which Averroes, comment 36, says: "This mover is a mover because it produces the motion, and because it is the end of the motion; but these differ in us: namely, that which moves us in place, insofar as it is an agent, and that which moves us insofar as it is an end. And it has a twofold being: in the soul, and outside the soul. For that which is in the soul is the agent of the motion, but insofar as it is outside the soul it is a mover as end. For example, since the bath has a twofold form, in the soul and outside the soul, beyond that form which is in the soul we desire another form, which is outside the soul, and on account of that form which is in the soul we desire another form which is outside the soul. The form of the bath, then, insofar as it is in the soul, is the agent of desire and motion; but insofar as it is outside the soul, it is the end of the motion, not the agent." Reason shows the same. For cognition is necessarily presupposed to willing; so it is some cause of it, as was shown above; and it is not a material, formal or final cause; so it is

its efficient cause: and this seems to be the reasoning of the Philosopher in the third book of On the Soul, where he was cited. Cognition is also naturally and essentially prior to willing; hence it too is some cause of it, as is clear from the thirteenth of this book, etc., as before. From these things it is known that it is not dissonant with reason, as the sixth supposes, that an irrational agent should perform a free act; indeed necessary reason requires this [n29]. If an irrational agent alone did this, it would be so; but that it does this together with a rational agent is in no way dissonant with reason. The last objection is purely Pelagian. For it would prove that grace is not necessarily required for the observance of the commandments, nor for attaining everlasting salvation; and it is no more an obstacle to one who says that grace is active than to one who says it is not active, provided he says that it is necessarily required for salvation, as everyone must say who is unwilling to profess the Pelagian heresy, as the earlier chapters make clear.

NOTES

1. Gratia Dei mecum ("the grace of God with me") anticipates the Pauline text, 1 Cor 15:10, that Bradwardine cites below at 365D–E: non ego, sed gratia Dei mecum. The author presents himself as a man helped by cooperating grace.
2. Savile's "Eth. 1.2 & 3" with "2" is Nicomachean Ethics II, chapters 1–3 (Ethics 2, 1–3). The "supposition" and the closing sentence quoted are from the end of II.3 (1105a). Savile's numbering of Aristotle's books and chapters is kept throughout (Conventions §5.4).
3. "Above in the first book, chapter seven" is Nicomachean Ethics I.7 (1098a), where the human good is defined as activity of the soul according to virtue, in a complete life. Savile's "1i 7o" is not expanded further.
4. The fomes and original sin are treated in Lombard, Sent. II, dist. 30–31. The printed "40" is apparently a slip for 30, but it is kept as Savile prints it.
5. The Hypognosticon (Hypomnesticon) is a work once ascribed to Augustine and now regarded as spurious. The numbers that follow (60; 48; "36 of this book"; 24) are Savile's, and the third presumably refers to chapter 36 of Book I. They are given without expansion.
6. Idem ("the same") follows a citation of Augustine, but the reference "3. sent." makes it Peter Lombard. The questions "what sort of mother?…" are Bradwardine's own.
7. Transumpto: transumptio is the scholastic term for metaphorical or transferred use of a word. The Pelagians' friends allow "efficient cause" of grace only in a figurative sense.
8. Grati: Bradwardine's gratus is "one who has grace" (pleasing to God, in grace). It is rendered "graced" or "one in grace", and non gratus "ungraced" or "one not in grace", so that the gratia family stays visible. Ingratus (the "ungrateful") keeps its ordinary sense but plays on the same root.
9. The variant alio ("and another") for actu would give "composed of the habit and something else, as of form and matter". The main reading ("habit and act") is awkward but construes, as the act is not a composite of habit and a further act. The text is therefore left as printed.
10. The variant accidentalis, "an improper and in a way accidental form", would be easier than the main reading actualis. Both construe, and the main reading is kept.
11. Pelagus Pelagij, "the sea of Pelagius", is a pun that cannot be kept in English: Greek pelagos, "sea", resembles the name Pelagius. Here and below the "sea" is Pelagianism, in which the opponents are drowned (also "the whirlpool of the Pelagian sea").
12. The thorn in the flesh and the angel of Satan are in 2 Cor 12:7, not 1 Cor 12; Savile prints "1. ad Cor. 12".
13. De caelo III.8 (306b), on Democritus and the shapes of the elements. "72" is Savile's number, presumably the number of the text or comment in the medieval Aristotle–Averroes edition. The quotation follows the medieval Latin of the passage.
14. The sentence adapts Augustine, Enchiridion: quamvis nec tunc sine gratia, "though not even then without grace". Savile's "sine gratia nec fuerat tunc" is kept as printed and construed in the sense Augustine's text gives.
15. The Council of Milevis (416) is meant. Gratian's Decretum, De consecratione, D.4, is "the Canon". "Epistle 134" is Savile's number; in modern numbering the Milevis correspondence is among Augustine's Epp. 175–176.
16. Ingratas instantias: instantia is the technical term for an objection. Ingratas ("graceless", "ungrateful") puns on gratia, and the phrase is rendered "ungrateful objections".
17. The unit ends mid-sentence at 369A; Savile's print continues at 369B with specialissimae ("the most specific species"), in the next stretch.
18. Savile's "Eth. 8, 3" and "infra 7" are Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3 (1156a) and VIII.7 (1158b), in the medieval division. Per the conventions, Savile's numbers are kept. The second quotation is a close paraphrase of the Latin translation Bradwardine used, not a word-for-word match.
19. Savile's reference is De libero arbitrio 7. The distinction of the will into instrument, affection and use is found in Anselm's De concordia III (c. 11); I have not verified the exact source of the quotation. I translate the reference as Savile gives it.
20. Gratus (opposed to non gratus) is the one who has grace, the one "pleasing" to God. It is the same word as "grateful", and its pairing with charus in the previous unit ("of one with charity and grace") makes the sense clear. I render it "one in grace" and "one not in grace".
21. Instantia is a counterexample or objection raised against a thesis. This chapter answers a numbered series of them, the "first" to the "last". The pun in instantia non instat cannot be kept; I render it "does not stand".
22. In modern divisions this is Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio 14 (§47); Savile's "twenty-third" is an older section number. In the final clause both Bernard's text and the print give in illa … ex illa. With hoc = arbitrium and illa = gratia, the sense is that the whole is "in" free choice and "from" grace. I give that sense, not the literal "in it, from it".
23. Gratis volentem: "freely", "gratuitously", with the sound of gratia behind it. In keeping with the conventions I give the sense "freely willing" and note the jingle, which English cannot reproduce.
24. William of Auvergne (d. 1249), the Tripartite being his Magisterium divinale. "22" is left as Savile prints it. The "Saint Stephen" is Stephen of Muret (d. 1124), founder of Grandmont, not the protomartyr. The sentence runs over the page turn (369E/370A), so the English breaks after "Saint Stephen made prayer for him".
25. The subject of peccat is the objection under discussion, here the third (compare "The fourth errs like the third"). Ignorat elenchum is the fallacy ignoratio elenchi: the objection misses what is actually at issue.
26. Savile prints "3i." and the keyed text has the same. I read tertii, "of the third [book]". Processiue is "in locomotion", i.e. motus processivus, moving from place to place, as in the Aristotelian tradition on animal movement.
27. The Latin has no verb or noun for "cause" in the second member: intellectus vero … voluntatis in istis. The words "is likewise one efficient cause" are supplied from the parallel first member.
28. The noua translatio of Metaphysics XII is the newer Greek-based Latin version, in contrast to the older translation that Averroes comments on. Savile's text does not name either.
29. The sense of quod tamen solum agens irrationabile hunc faceret, esset is elliptical: esset has no predicate in the print. From the contrast that follows, the missing word is "dissonant with reason". I supply "so" and do not emend the Latin.