De causa Dei: Book II, Chapter 27
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, 567A–567D; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/2/27/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[567A–567B]
CHAPTER XXVII.

He corrects the sixth. [n1]

[567B–567D]
The last quibble of those mentioned is easily destroyed by the same arguments that destroyed the earlier ones. Moreover, every evil act, as to the substance of the act, is essentially something, just as a good one is. The act of fornication is no less something than the lawful act of marriage, as is plainly shown by arguments that speak for themselves and walk upon the earth. [n2] Hence Anselm, in On the Fall of the Devil 8, showing the same conclusion, says: "In short, a good will is no more something than an evil will; for the will that wishes to give mercifully is no more something than the one that wishes to seize violently." Therefore every evil act, as to the substance of the act, is brought about equally with a good one, and so it has an efficient cause equally, and that cause necessarily requires the co-efficiency of God. God therefore truly and properly effects any evil act whatever, according to the substance or pure essence of the act, as the twentieth and twenty-fifth chapters of this second book argued more fully.

Likewise William of Auxerre, on the second book of the Sentences, asks whether an evil action is done by God operating and cooperating, [n3] and he records three opinions. The first says that every evil action is solely from man or from the Devil. The second holds that every evil action is from God, because God alone gives the power to carry it out. The third maintains that every evil action, insofar as it is an action, is good and from God. After rejecting the others, he himself holds this one, as the twentieth chapter of this second book cited more fully.

The authority of Genesis alleged to the contrary does not mean that all the things God had made were very good morally. For how could inanimate or irrational things be morally good, when they are not capable of moral goodness? Yet all that God had made was naturally very good, and so too are evil acts as to their substance or essence, which God makes. They are not good as to the malice, which by the twenty-sixth of the first book is nothing, and which therefore is made properly neither by man nor by God, but only improperly by man. To the first authority, that of Augustine, the twenty-fifth chapter of this book replies. To the second and other such authorities one can reply by the same means, and by the thirty-fourth chapter of the first book.

NOTES

1. Sextam corrigit: Savile's argument refers to the sixth of the objections ("quibbles", cauillationes) to the chapter-20 argument that God is the cause of every act, evil acts included. The text itself calls this one the last (ultima cauillatio). Corrigit here means "rebuts".
2. argumenta per se loquentia, et gradientia super terram: arguments that "speak for themselves" (self-evident) and "walk on the ground" (palpable, obvious to anyone). The second phrase may allude to refutation by walking, solvitur ambulando, but Bradwardine does not say so. I have kept the images and not paraphrased them.
3. "William of Auxerre" is Savile's Williamus Altissiodorensis. His "on the second book of the Sentences" presumably means the second book of William's Summa aurea. The wording of the three opinions is Bradwardine's report, and I have not checked it against William.