De causa Dei: Book II, Chapter 16
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, 521B–526E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/2/16/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[521B]
CHAPTER XVI.

On everlasting perseverance, or the obstinacy of the wicked in evil, and its cause.

Now that we have treated of everlasting perseverance, or the confirmation of the good in good, what would be more fitting than to treat of everlasting perseverance, or the obstinacy of the wicked in evil? Moreover, as confirmation makes the confirmed unable to sin, so also obstinacy makes the obstinate unable to will or to do good. As confirmation makes the blessed unable to cease from the beatific act, so obstinacy makes these unable to be free of the miserable act;

[521C]
which is aptly figured in Job 41, where it is said, "His heart will be hardened like a stone, and will be bound fast like a hammerer's anvil." Augustine says in On the Faith, to Peter, 21:[n1] Neither the devil nor any of his Angels, since they were thrust down by the merit of their ruin into this lower darkness, has been able or will be able to take up a good will again. For if it were possible for human nature, after turning away from God and losing the goodness of its will, to have been able to have it again from itself, much more possible would angelic nature have this; the less it is weighed down by the weight of an earthly body, the more it would be endowed with this faculty. But God shows whence good will is given to men; and the Angels, when they had it, so lost it that thereafter they cannot have it again once lost. And further on, at 26, he says that in this life alone is there a time of fruitful repentance; whoever has not made it in this life will indeed have repentance in the age to come for his evils, but will not find pardon in the sight of God;

[521D–521E]
for although there will be a sting of remorse there, there will be no correction of the will. Such persons will so blame their own iniquity that justice can in no way be loved or desired by them: for their will is such that it always has in itself the punishment of its own malice, yet can never receive an affection of goodness. For just as those who will reign with Christ will have in themselves no remnants of evil will, so those who will be assigned to the punishment of eternal fire with the devil and his Angels, as they will have no further rest, would in no way be able to have a good will. And earlier, at 19, he ordained that the part of the Angels that departed from God should so wholly remain in eternal punishment that he even prepared an eternal fire for it. In that fire all those transgressor Angels can never be without evil will, nor without punishment; but while the evil of their unjust turning-away remains in them, the eternal condemnation of a just retribution also remains. Anselm also says, in On the Fall of the Devil, 6: The Angels were so separated that those who cling to justice can will no good in which they do not rejoice, and those who forsake it can will nothing without being deprived of it. This many Doctors also attest in many places, as Peter too shows and maintains in Sentences 2, distinctions 5 and 7, and in 4, the last distinction.[n2]

Concerning the cause of obstinacy, however, various opinions are put forward. Some posit only a privative cause, others a positive one, others none at all. Of those who posit a privative cause, some say that it is a defect, or desertion, of charity or of grace, as Peter seems to intend in Sentences 2, distinctions 5 and 7. But if that were so, then, since according to the same Peter, Sentences 2, distinctions 5 and 24, the Angels and the first parents were created without grace, they would at that point have been finally obstinate, and every wayfarer lacking grace would be immutably obstinate. Again, if a defect of grace is a sufficient cause of obstinacy, then the habit of grace is also a sufficient cause of confirmation, contrary to what was just shown.[n3] Again, obstinacy, and the continuation of an evil will, is a really positive effect; it therefore has a really positive cause, and not merely a privative one.[n4]

[521E–522B]
Others say that this cause is a defect of the goodwill or mercy of God, namely that God does not will to have mercy on the wretched man. But this is destroyed by the preceding argument. Again, by 23 of the first, the will of God is immutable; so if God at some time does not will to have mercy on this wretched man, he never did will it. Any obstinate man, therefore, whenever he was, was immutably obstinate. Others say that this cause is a defect of confirmation in good. But these will be refuted like the preceding; moreover, if it were so, any wayfarer who is not confirmed would be eternally obstinate. Others judge that the cause lies in the power of using free choice.[n5] They say that the vehemence of the punishment which the obstinate undergo makes them senseless, and, according to what was premised in the third of this book, takes from them all use of free choice, and sends them into the exterior darkness, and so makes them obstinate. Hence the Prophet says, "My eye is disturbed by fury," or, as the Roman Psalter has it, "My eye is disturbed by wrath," Psalm 6.[n6] Augustine, expounding this, says that the wrath of God will be in the future judgment, and that here there is a certain beginning of it, when men suffer pains and torments, and above all the loss of understanding of the truth, as I have already recalled in the saying, "God gave them over to a reprobate mind."

[522B–522C]
For that is blindness of mind. Whoever has been given over to it is shut off from the inner light of God, though not yet utterly, while he is in this life. For there are exterior darknesses, which are understood to pertain rather to the day of judgment, so that he is utterly outside God who, while there was time, refused to be corrected; and what is it to be utterly outside God, if not to be in the supreme blindness? Of these exterior darknesses too Peter writes thus, in Sentences 4, last distinction: Surely the exterior darknesses can be understood as a certain malignity of hatred and of will, which will then grow in the minds of the reprobate, and a certain forgetfulness of God. For they will be afflicted by God with the pains of torments, inward and outward, and thrown into confusion, so that from these pains they hardly, and rarely or never, call anything to mind for thinking about God. Those who are pressed by too great a weight become so stupefied and disturbed that meanwhile they do not extend themselves to any other thought; the thrust of their thinking tends to where the force of pain is felt. But however it will be after the day of judgment, it does not seem to be so before it. For now the obstinate demons have great knowledge, ingeniously foretell many true things, deceive men, and subtly perform many skilful and marvelous works, as experience, and many books, historical and other, pagan and Catholic, bear witness.

[522C–523A]
Hence Genesis 3 also says that the Serpent was more cunning than all the animals; and in the Gospels it is written that the demons knew the Lord to be Christ. Their great knowledge Augustine, Gregory, Isidore, and very many Catholic Doctors attest in agreement in many places, as Peter too in some measure recounts and shows in Sentences 2, distinction 7. It also seems that almighty God could have struck the apostate Angels with the punishment of obstinacy without so great a vehemence of the pain of sense, and perhaps without any pain of sense, indeed even with delight, as it is also read of them at times that they take delight in certain things.

Others, however, think that the cause of obstinacy in demons is the natural immutability of the will. For they say that the willing power, or appetitive power, is proportioned to the cognitive power, or apprehensive power, by which it is moved. The Angel, because he is not weighed down by the mass of a body, knows and apprehends immutably, without discursive reasoning, and therefore also wills and desires immutably.

But this position seems to err both in matter and in form. In matter, by supposing something false. For as the Angel is mutable in himself and in his nature, since he passes from not-being to being, and the reverse, so also in his action, especially since he has free choice, naturally capable of merit and of sin: for of similar Angels some sinned, and some resisted sin and merited laudably. Again, the evil Angels, before they sinned, had a good will, as did the other Angels and the first man; for it does not seem that during the whole time they stood they were utterly idle. For if at first they were idle in will and afterwards active, they were changed in will. And if they were then idle in will but not in intellect, since they then knew God and themselves, as no one doubts and many authorities attest, as Peter also makes plain in Sentences 2, distinction 3, then their will is not necessarily conformed to their cognition, which the hypothesis, however, supposed. That the evil Angels, before the fall, had an act of will, indeed a good act, many authorities cited in the ninth of this book and the tenth expressly attest. The Prophet seems to hint at this figuratively of Lucifer, too, when he says: "You were the seal of likeness, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty; you were in the delights of the Paradise of God; every precious stone was your covering," etc. "You a cherub outstretched and protecting, and I set you on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of fiery stones you walked; perfect in your ways from the day of your creation, until iniquity was found in you," Ezekiel 28. Gregory too plainly expounds this of Lucifer himself, in Moralia 32 and in Homily 34 on the Gospels. The Devil therefore had, before the fall, some cognition, willing, and love, which by sinning he lost; and so he had a mutable will.

[523A–523B]
Again, suppose an Angel willed something that appeared to him good, and that afterwards the same thing appeared to the same Angel purely evil; then, as the things shown in the second of this book attest, he gave up his first willing. Again, when an object appears to the Angel under the aspect of good, he does not necessarily will it at once, as appears from what was shown earlier concerning the sixth question of the second of this book. With regard to a good sufficiently shown, therefore, he can for some time remain idle in will, and for another time will it; he is therefore of mutable will. Why, moreover, can he not freely cease from that act, as he could freely refrain from it? What necessitates the Angelic will more to continue its free act perpetually than to produce it in time, following a free idleness leading up to it?[n7] It cannot be said that the act, once it has been produced, necessitates the Angelic will to continue it unceasingly, for by a similar reason a proportional act of the human will would likewise necessitate it.

And if anyone should say that the free act of the Angelic will is produced only after sufficient deliberation has been had, and is then necessarily produced, and that the deliberation, once had, necessarily always remains, so that the act of will likewise,[n8] he says what is false, destroys the hypothesis, and does not avoid the difficulty. He says what is false: for take the first free act in an Angel; deliberation does not precede it, since deliberation itself involves a free act. Free choice can also issue[n9] into its free act from a mere simple apprehension, with no syllogistic deliberation preceding and concluding that it ought so to act; indeed, even against such a deliberation, as the corollary of the third of this book shows. For otherwise, in Lucifer, who willed ill, an erroneous deliberation and an error would have preceded the sin. That would be against the authority of Ezekiel set out above with the expositions of Gregory mentioned; and against Augustine, as it seems, in 11 on Genesis according to the letter, 24 and following, at length; and against many Doctors treating this matter. Nor does any reason, or antecedent deliberation, necessitate the will, as the third of this book with its Corollary makes plain.

[523B–523D]
It destroys the hypothesis affirming that in Angels there is no discursive reasoning; nor does it avoid the difficulty. For deliberating itself is either necessary or voluntary. If it is necessary, then from that necessity willing follows necessarily, and so willing itself is also necessary, not free. If deliberating is free, then either every deliberation of the Angel is produced by another preceding deliberation, and so there will be an infinite regress in deliberations of this kind, which no one will concede on deliberation, or there is some first deliberating of his, and the answer is emptied, and the difficulty returns.

Again, by the same reasoning, the cause of the confirmation of the good Angels would likewise be privative, namely the immutability of the will, contrary to what was shown in the immediately preceding of this book. Again, from the same principle a natural thing comes to rest in the terminus toward which it is moved, as is plain of the elements and other things, and Philosophical authority attests; but from immutability alone the will is never moved to act, but only from some positive principle.

Again, the Angels before confirmation did not know all things, because they did not foreknow their fall nor their confirmation, as Augustine teaches in 11 on Genesis, where before, and Anselm in On the Fall of the Devil, 21 and following.

[523D–524A]
Indeed, not even after confirmation did all the holy Angels know all things, but some of them learned certain things anew. This can plainly be gathered from Zechariah, Daniel, and the other Prophets, from the speeches and utterances of the Angels, from the Angelic hierarchy of Dionysius, and from the authentic writings of the Catholic Doctors. From these it appears that not only by God but also by one another some of them are enlightened, and are newly instructed by revelations. Indeed, not only through God and other Angels, but certain things also become newly known to certain Angels through men, as the Apostle says in Ephesians 3: "To me, the least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all as to what is the dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God who created all things, so that there might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the foreordination of the ages which he made in Christ Jesus our Lord."

On which the Gloss: "Of the mystery hidden from the ages," that is, concealed from every creature of the ages: "and existing in God," that is, known to God alone. "That it may be made known": that is, it was given to me to preach the Gospel, and to enlighten, and to see how great this is, since through it something was added for the Angels, who learned many secrets in these matters. This is what he means by "to preach the Gospel": I mean, so that the manifold wisdom of God concerning the restoration of men may be made known through the Church, which receives the gifts of God, that is, through the Apostles preaching in the Church; to "principalities and powers," that is, to the various orders of Angels, who are "in the heavenly places," that is, in heaven, where we too shall be. And it adds: For blessed Jerome says that the angelic dignities did not at first understand the above-mentioned mystery until the passion of Christ was completed and the preaching of the Apostles spread through the nations. Hence in Isaiah the Angels, in wonder, said, "Who is this who comes from Edom?" and in the Psalm, "Who is this King of glory?" Not only to the Patriarchs and Prophets, then, but to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God has been revealed through the Church, that is, through what has been said and done in the Church.

[524A–524B]
Chrysostom also, On John, Homily 1: John, he says, says nothing human to us, but all things spiritual, from the depths of the Holy Spirit, from those hidden treasures, things that not even the Angels knew before he said them here. For these too have learned with us, through John's voice and through us, and that they learned with us; and blessed Paul shows this when he says, "That the manifoldly varied wisdom of God might now be made known to the Principalities and Powers through the Church." If therefore the Principalities and Powers, and the Cherubim and Seraphim, learned these things through the Church, it is clear that they too ran to this hearing with great eagerness: "For in this we are honored not a little, that the Angels have learned with us what they did not know." Peter also, in Sentences 2, distinction 11, shows and holds the same through the same authorities. If, then, Angels are of mutable intellect, why not also of mutable will? And if the Angels do not always know everything, but learn some things anew, it is by no means wholly clear that they cannot reason discursively; rather it seems that they can.

Again, Augustine, in On the Faith, to Peter, 21: If it were possible for human nature, after turning away from God and losing the goodness of its will, to have been able to have it again from itself, much more possible would angelic nature have this; the less it is weighed down by the weight of an earthly body, the more it would be endowed with this faculty, as is more fully alleged above. According to Augustine's view, therefore, the Angelic will, once turned away from God, is by its nature more able to return, to be converted, and therefore more mutable, than the human will. This position also errs in form, for it does not avoid the difficulty. For the human soul, separated from the body, is condemned; and the whole man, in body and soul together, is condemned after the final judgment. Yet each, by its nature mutable in apprehension and likewise in will, is rendered obstinate, like the demons.

[524B–524D]
Of those who posit a positive cause, some say that it is voluntary obstinacy, or the will obstinate in evil. Hence Bernard, On Grace and Free Choice, 18: Neither God, he says, lacks free choice, nor the devil. That the former cannot be evil is not a weak necessity, but a will firm in good and a voluntary firmness; and that the latter cannot breathe again toward good is not brought about by some alien violent oppression, but by his own will, obstinate in evil, and voluntary obstinacy. But this cannot stand, for nothing can be the cause of itself. Again, when it is said that the cause why the devil cannot breathe again toward good is his own will, obstinate in evil, and voluntary obstinacy, I ask what the cause of that obstinacy is. Here perhaps it will be said (and this can be the second opinion of those positing a positive cause of obstinacy in evil)[n10] that it is the free choice of the obstinate man himself, freely shunning every good and freely continuing the evil act. Bernard seems to hold this where he was cited, so that he adds at once: Now, then, free choice is said to be free rather because, whether in good or in evil, it makes the will equally free, since neither anyone good nor likewise anyone evil ought to be called so, or can be, unless willing. By such reasoning it will not be incongruously said to stand equally toward good and toward evil on both sides: namely that what is equal for it is not indeed ease in choosing,

[524D–525A]
but freedom in willing. By this prerogative of divine dignity, indeed, as has been said, the Creator marked out the rational creature singularly, so that, just as he himself was of his own right, and that he was good was of his own will and not of necessity, so too that creature should in a way be of its own right in this matter. It should become evil, and be justly condemned, only by its own will, or remain good, and be saved with merit. And earlier, at 5: Freedom from necessity, he says, belongs equally and indifferently to God and to every rational creature, as much good as evil; it is neither lost nor diminished by sin or misery, nor is it greater in the just man than in the sinner, nor fuller in the Angel than in the man. For just as the consent of the human will, converted to good through grace, made man freely good and free in the good, in that he is made willing and not drawn unwilling, so, having fallen willingly into evil, it constitutes him in evil no less free than spontaneous, led indeed by his own will, not compelled from elsewhere to be evil. And as the heavenly Angel, or God himself, remains freely good, because by his own will and not by some extrinsic necessity, so assuredly the devil equally freely both fell into evil and persists in it, by his own voluntary nod and not by another's impulse. The will of freedom remains, therefore, where there also is capacity of mind, as full indeed in the wicked as in the good, but more ordered in the good; and just as completely, in its own measure, in the creature as in the Creator, but more potent in him.

But this does not assign a sufficient cause of obstinacy either. For if free choice alone makes anyone obstinate in evil, this is either mutably or immutably. Not mutably, that is, freely,[n11] as the very nature of obstinacy implies and what precedes makes manifest; nor immutably, since free choice is, of itself and by its nature, mutable according to contradiction, as the first of this book and what follows have taught, as it is also clear that it has been and is in wayfarers who are neither obstinate nor confirmed:

[525A–525C]
if therefore free choice by itself alone at some time hardens anyone immutably in an evil act, then it does so always; or if at some time not, then never. Hence the Philosopher too says, in On Generation 2, penultimate chapter, that what is the same and in the same state is always naturally apt to do the same.[n12] If therefore a being having free choice together with an evil act can at one time, say in the time of pilgrimage, freely, according to contradiction, give it up or hold it, and is not immutably obstinate in it, and at another time, say in the time of obstinacy, is not so but immutably obstinate in it, then free choice alone in no way suffices; some other cause is required, which would bind free choice insolubly and make it captive in an act of this kind of its own. Again, if free choice alone hardened the wicked in evil, why would free choice alone not likewise confirm the good in good, contrary to what has just been declared?

Others, however, say that the cause of obstinacy sought is the malice and vice of the obstinate man. Hence Peter, Sentences 2, distinction 7: The wicked, he says, are made obstinate by God through malice, so that they cannot have a good will, or will well. And further on he says: The wicked are hardened in vice, so that they cannot live well. But that malice and vice is either a pure privation or something positive. If a pure privation, it is rejected by what precedes. If it is something positive, it is either an act or a habit. If an act, some created act would likewise be the cause of the beatific confirmation of the blessed, contrary to what was shown in the immediately preceding of this book. It was also shown in the third of this book that no created thing can necessitate free choice to will, and hence not to continue its willing eternally. Again, that act is either of necessary continuation or not. If so, what is the cause of that necessity? If not, how will it necessitate another thing for eternity? But if it is said to be some habit, it will be rejected as the act was.

Others still believe that the cause of obstinacy is the vehemence of the willing. For they say that the more perfect the will is, the more perfectly it immerses itself in its object of willing.[n13] But the Angelic will, because separated from the body, is supremely perfect and perfectly free, and so immerses itself so vehemently in its object of willing that it cannot draw itself back.

[525C–525D]
But this position, like the fifth, errs in matter and in form, and can likewise be rejected. For it posits that Angels have a naturally immutable will, as that one did, and does not avoid the difficulty about the cause of the obstinacy of the human soul, or of the whole obstinate man. Moreover, specially against this one: as a rational agent has freedom of contradiction with respect to its act, so also with respect to the degree of that act, and the more perfectly and freely it acts, the more so. Again, let a wayfarer immerse himself as far as he can in some object of willing, good or evil. Since the act of the Angel and this act of the man are proportional to these agents, each being according to the utmost of the power of each, if one act so binds its agent that he cannot draw himself back, the other likewise binds its own agent so. This holds especially since the power of human freedom is more imperfect, and less, than the power of Angelic freedom. Yet no one doubts that this is false, since man still remains a wayfarer;[n14] or, if the powerless man can draw himself back, then the Angel, who is powerful, can too, since each is mutable by nature.

Again, by the same reasoning the holy Angels would be sufficiently confirmed in good by themselves, contrary to what was shown in the immediately preceding of this book. Again, as much as a cause does toward the continuation of an act of the Angelic will, so much can some secondary cause also do toward the production of an act of the Angelic will. But some secondary cause, say the act itself, or the mode of willing of the Angelic will, does so much that it necessitates the will to its continuation; so some secondary cause could also necessitate it to its free act, contrary to what was premised in the third of this book. Again, by the same principle a thing is moved to its terminus and rests in the terminus, as is plain of the elements and of composite things, irrational and rational. But the Angel, by freedom of choice, according to contradiction and contingently, is moved to the act of willing; hence, as far as lies in him, by the same freedom, according to contradiction and contingently, and not by contrary necessity, he rests in the same act as in a terminus.

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Those who say that no cause of obstinacy is to be posited say that obstinacy is nothing, and so has no cause. For they say that obstinacy is only an impotence, or privation of the power of willing well and of ceasing from willing ill, and that the evil willing itself of the obstinate man is one positive effect of free choice, but is not obstinacy itself nor any part of it.

But these err twice, in matter and in form. In matter, because they suppose something false, namely that no privation has a cause. For who does not know that forgetfulness, ignorance, blindness, eclipse, and other such things have causes? Who, too, does not know that Philosophy teaches in many places that the same cause, now present, now absent, now acting, now ceasing, is the cause now of some present effect, now of its privation, or deficiency? How, moreover, will change come about from one of two contradictories to the other, and from true to false, or the reverse, without a cause? In a similar way someone could pretend that there is no cause of confirmation in good, and that it is not something positive, but only an impotence, or privation of the power of willing ill and of ceasing from willing well, and that the beatific act itself of the confirmed man is one positive effect of free choice, but not the confirmation itself nor anything of it.

[526A–526B]
They err in form too, because they do not avoid the difficulty. For if free choice, as far as lies in itself, could, and formerly could, freely according to contradiction continue its act or not, and now necessarily continues it, this is from some cause newly necessitating it, or from some impediment newly prohibiting it and making it impossible to cease. Free choice also, as far as lies in itself, could, and formerly could, be moved to an act contrary to the miserable act of the obstinate man, and now cannot. This therefore is from some cause, or from some impediment newly prohibiting and making impossible the eliciting of such an act. What, then, is this cause, or impediment of this sort? And the difficulty returns.

There are other ways of speaking too, less probable; but let it suffice for this occasion to have touched briefly on these few, the more probable.

Saving, then, the opinion of our elders, it seems that some cause of obstinacy is to be posited: a privative cause, namely, and likewise a positive one. It is privative as to what is posited there as privative, namely not being able to will well. This I take to be a privation, or defect, of grace, according to what was set out earlier in 39 and 43 of the first book; and they cannot merit this, by 35 and what follows in the said first; nor does God will to give that grace to such persons freely. Indeed, so that, according to what was premised in 13 of the first, this privative cause may be reduced to the prior positive cause, they therefore lack grace and will lack it: as the most just punishment of their prior sin, God wills them to lack eternally the grace that, had they not sinned, they would have had eternally. The cause of obstinacy is likewise positive, as to what is posited there as positive, which is the eternal continuation of the act, and this is the free choice of the obstinate man, as Bernard seems to hold. But because this alone does not suffice, as was shown above, it seems, according to what was premised in the immediately preceding of this book, that God's being indignant and unwilling that this act should ever cease, and his willing it to be continued eternally as the most just eternal punishment of the preceding sin, is its sufficient and supreme cause.

[526B–526E]
Hence the Prophet says: "In his indignation is wrath, and in his will is life," Psalm 29.[n15] But this wrath, or life, from the divine indignation, or will, is not transitory but lingering, as he at once adds: "In the evening weeping will linger, and in the morning joy." This is said of the evening and morning that are special in the present, or general in the future judgment, when the sun now sets, or then will set, on sinners; but for the just the true Sun rises or will rise, and so will linger forever. Whence is this wrath or punishment, this life or joy, so lingering, if not from the same divine indignation or will? On which the Gloss: "In the evening," etc. To the two things said before it returns two others in this way: because wrath is in his indignation, therefore in the evening weeping will linger, and because life is in his will, therefore in the morning there will be joy. Follow the order of the letter and the exposition of the words thus: Wrath proceeded from his indignation, and that wrath is not brief, but long, because weeping, that is every kind of misery of man, both of guilt and of punishment, will linger; although evening and morning are there expounded otherwise by others. For who, knowing the manifold fruitfulness of Sacred Scripture, would not know that it is expounded in many ways? And Augustine says in Confessions 1, 12: You have commanded, Lord, and so it is, that every disordered mind be its own punishment. He also says in On the Faith, to Peter, 26, that their will was such as always to have in itself the punishment of its malice, as is more fully alleged above. Hence also, as Peter recounts, Sentences 4, last distinction, although the Doctors disagree about that will of the obstinate (some saying that it is not sin, and others that it is sin), on this, however, all agree, that it is itself the punishment of a preceding evil merit. This can also readily be had from 39 of the first, where it is shown that no evil is unpunished, and from 34 of the first, where it is taught that one sin is the punishment of another.

This will of the obstinate, therefore, even if it is a sin, is nonetheless good according to the substance of the act, as 26 of the first attests; and insofar as it is the punishment of a prior sin it is just, as no one is ignorant, and is clear from 34 of the first book of this work. Its supreme cause, therefore, is the divine will, as the ninth and the twenty-first of the first demonstrate. But God wills these things in the obstinate reprobate for the instruction of the elect on the way, and the glory of the blessed in the homeland, as is clear from 39 of the first. And if anyone should object that God would then be the Author of sin, and would will sin, and would will every obstinate man to will, as God wills him to will, and so justly to will, and other such things, 26 and 34 of the first, with their like, will answer.

NOTES

1. De fide ad Petrum circulated under Augustine's name and is printed so by Savile, but it is by Fulgentius of Ruspe (CPL 826). Bradwardine cites it as Augustine's throughout, by section number (19, 21, 26).
2. "Petrus" is Peter Lombard, Sentences, cited by book and distinction: "2 sent. dist. 5" is Book II, distinction 5; "4 sent. dist. vlt." is Book IV, the last distinction.
3. Bradwardine cross-refers by chapter number alone, and the numbers are kept as he wrote them (Conventions §5.4). "Primi" means Book I ("39 of the first" is I.39); "huius" means this book, Book II ("the third of this" is II.3). "Proximo huius" means the immediately preceding chapter, II.15 on the confirmation of the good Angels; "proximo praeostensa" means what was just shown there.
4. In Savile's margin the successive opinions on the cause of obstinacy are numbered ("Opinio 2", "3", "4", "5", and so on). The TCP keying has the labels for 2, 3, 4 and 5 inside the running text; they are removed from the English and listed under Margin. See the Errata.
5. Latin: quod sit in potentia vtendi libero arbitrio. The subject (the cause) is understood. The explanation that follows shows that the cause is the impairment of the power of using free choice, which the pain removes.
6. Ps 6:8 in the Vulgate (6:7 in English numbering). The Gallican Psalter has "a furore"; Bradwardine notes that the Roman Psalter reads "ab ira". "God gave them over to a reprobate mind" is Rom 1:28.
7. Print: post liberam vacationem ductiuam. I take ductiuam as qualifying vacationem, "leading up to" the act, and have not emended.
8. The verb is lacking after quare et actus voluntatis similiter; "remains" is understood from the preceding clause. The main verb of the whole sentence is dicit falsum below.
9. The print has no verb in Potest quoque liberum arbitrium in liberum actum suum ex sola simplici apprehensione…. The sense requires something like "issue" or "break forth into"; it is left unemended.
10. The second opinion among those positing a positive cause; Savile's margin numbers it Opinion 7 overall.
11. Latin: non mutabiliter libere. I take libere as explaining mutabiliter. To be hardened by free choice alone would be to be hardened in the mutable way of free choice, able to reverse, and that is what the nature of obstinacy excludes.
12. Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption II.10, 336a27. Savile's "2. de Generat. penult." is Book II, penultimate chapter.
13. Volubile is the object of willing, formed from volo on the pattern of intelligibile. It is not the common Latin volubilis ("rolling").
14. Quod nullus dubitat esse falsum refers to the supposed consequence that a wayfarer cannot draw himself back. If the human act bound its agent irreversibly, which no one believes, the angelic act would bind more strongly.
15. Ps 29:6 in the Vulgate (Ps 30:5 in English numbering); the next verse quoted is the continuation of the same verse.