Book II, Chapter 4

Chapter IV. That free choice, when tempted, cannot by its own powers, without God's help and his grace, overcome any temptation.

Having shown just now that no secondary cause and no temptation can necessitate free choice to its rational and free act, it remains to show, and not irrelevantly, that free choice when tempted cannot by its own powers, without God's help and his grace, overcome any temptation. For proud Pelagius maintained the opposite of this. He said that man by the powers of free choice alone can fulfil God's commandments, as is more fully recounted in the ‖B1 third 1 of the first. It is also recounted at the end of the book of blessed Prosper on behalf of the preachers of God's grace against Cassian, where thirteen errors of Pelagius are recited. Two of these are put forward here: that free choice would not exist if it needed God's help, since each person has it in his own will to do something or not to do it; and that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice.

The Council of Milevis bears witness to the same thing. Augustine was present at it, and Anselm, legate of the Roman Church, against the Pelagians 2. In it this is written: "It pleased all the bishops who were in this holy synod to establish these things which have been defined in the present council." It goes on: "It pleased them 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 that have already been committed, and not also for help that they may not be committed, C1 let him be anathema." This is recited in the canon on Consecration, distinction 4, at the end. Hence Augustine also, in book 1 against Pelagius and Caelestius, in On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin, 23, writes thus of the book to the consecrated virgin, namely Demetrias 3: when he says, "that we may merit divine grace, that we may the more easily resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit," he plainly shows what he thinks.

"For why did he insert this word, 'the more easily'? Would not the sense have been whole without it: 'that we resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit'? But who does not understand how much harm he has done by this addition? He wants it to be believed, of course, that the powers of nature are so great (and by exalting them he sends them headlong) that even without the help of the Holy Spirit, if less easily, yet in some way the wicked spirit is resisted."

This error of Pelagius, then, although it seems to have been destroyed by what has been said, can nevertheless be destroyed and refuted over and above, and not unprofitably, in another way by other arguments. For every temptation either incites to doing what is forbidden or draws back from doing what is commanded. Therefore every temptation is properly overcome either by ceasing from what is forbidden or by doing what is commanded. But no one can act without God acting, as the third and the fourth of the first show. Nor can anyone cease from acting without God causing his ceasing. For if ceasing is acting, this is clear from what was said before; but if it is purely not acting, it is clear by the tenth and by the corollaries of the thirteenth of the first book.

Again, by the twenty-second of the first, God necessarily either wills that any tempted person overcome the temptation, and then by the tenth of the same he brings insuperable help to the tempted person; or he does not will him to overcome, indeed wills him not to overcome, and then by the same tenth he will in no way overcome. Or let it be argued thus. Let the falsifier posit that the tempted person overcomes the temptation without God's help. Then by the twenty-second of the first, God has an act of will concerning this overcoming; therefore either a willing or a nilling 4. If a willing, then by the tenth of the first he gives insuperable help to the tempted person. If a nilling, then by the same tenth the tempted person in no way overcomes the temptation.

More briefly, another way: the tempted person overcomes; it is therefore true that the tempted person overcomes; hence by the corollary of the twenty-second of the first, God wills him to overcome, and so on, as before. Nor can anyone pretend that the tempted person first overcomes in the order of nature, and that therefore God afterwards, in the order of nature, wills him to overcome, and so that divine willing gives the tempted person no help. For by the twenty-second and twenty-fourth of the first that willing is

eternal, and by the twentieth and twenty-first of the same it is not caused by this overcoming 5.

Again, such a victory pleases God; therefore he approves and wills it. He does so not by a new willing, nor by one caused afterwards by such a victory, as was just now argued, but by a willing prior to that victory, eternally, in time and in nature, as the eighteenth of the first with the three following makes plain. Therefore by the tenth of the first that willing is an insuperable helper to the one overcoming.

Again, otherwise not every victory of the tempted person would be pre-established by divine providence, but some would be left to chance and fortune, against the twenty-seventh of the first and the chapters that follow.

Again, by the thirty-first of the first, bodily victory is contained under divine providence; but spiritual victory is better than that; therefore by the thirty-first of the first, it cannot exist without divine providence.

Again, all the reasons and authorities proving that bodily victory is given by the Lord will prove the same of spiritual victory. For everything written about bodily victories in the Old Testament prefigures spiritual victories. For according to the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 10, "All things happened to them in figure," as the thirty-first of the first treated more fully. Hence also Gregory, who is cited in Canon 23, question 1: "Unless," he says, "unless those fleshly wars bore the figure of spiritual wars, never, I think, would the books of the Jewish histories have been handed down by the Apostles to be read in the churches to the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace."

Again, to resist a greater temptation is a mark of greater power, and to resist a lesser, of lesser. Therefore to resist a temptation however small is a mark of some power. But no power can do anything without the Lord of powers, who is the first power of all powers, as the second, third and fourth chapters of the first teach. The Psalmist also said this, faithfully protesting, in Psalm 139 6: "Lord, Lord, power of my salvation, you have overshadowed my head in the day of battle; do not hand me over, Lord, from my desire, to the sinner." And in Psalm 59: "Give us help, Lord, out of tribulation, for the salvation of man is vain; in God we shall do mightily, and he will bring to nothing those who afflict us." And he also says, more expressly, in Psalm 32: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power."

On this verse Augustine, in the first treatise, understands by "the heavens" the just; and in the third treatise he speaks thus: C1 "They did not have something from themselves and receive something from the Lord as a supplement 7. For their power, not in part but entire, is by the spirit of his mouth." And further on in the same third treatise he says that the heavens are the Apostles, and, speaking to them as if in the person of the Lord, he says thus: "Behold, I send you as sheep among wolves. Are you therefore now to arm yourselves with your own power? Heaven forbid. Rather, do not think how or what you will say; for in that hour it will be given you what you will say. For it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Father who speaks in you, because all their power is by the spirit of his mouth."

Again, since it takes greater power and difficulty to resist a great temptation than to elicit a small act, if someone can do the greater without God's help he can also do the lesser. This is against the third and fourth chapters of the first book, and against Augustine just cited. Hence also Gregory, in Moralia 22, 9, on that passage of Job 31, "If I have rejoiced," C2 etc., and "I have kissed my hand," etc. says: "The saints know that they have been changed to better wishes or works not by their own power, but by prevenient grace from above, and whatever good they see in themselves they recognize as the gift of immortal grace. They become debtors for the gift received to him who, by going before, gave them the willing of the good that they had not willed, and has subsequently granted them the ability to do the good that they will.

Hence it is well said by John, 'They worshiped him who lives for ever and ever, casting their crowns before the throne of the Lord.' For to cast one's crowns before the throne is to attribute the victories of one's contests not to oneself but to the Author, so as to refer the glory of praise to him from whom they know they received the powers of the contest. Blessed Job, then, so recounts the good works he has done that he does not attribute them to his own working but returns to the praise of the Author. He denies that he kissed his hand with his mouth, as if he were saying openly: 'I do not put forward my works as mine, because whoever attributes to himself what he does is convicted of denying the grace of his Author.' Hence he adds at once: 'which is the greatest iniquity and a denial against the most high God.' For it is clear that he denies him whose grace he despises, if he arrogates to himself the powers of good work. This is rightly also called the greatest iniquity, since every sin that arises from weakness in no way loses hope, because it seeks pardon from the heavenly Judge. But presumption of one's own power is in despair so much the more gravely as it is farther from humility, and when it attributes to itself the powers of working, it does not have recourse to the help of the Author."

Therefore Augustine also, on John, part one, E1 and in homily 53, recounting a twofold heresy, writes thus: "Some, excessive confidence in their own will has lifted into pride, and others, excessive distrust of their own will has cast down into negligence. Those say: Why do we ask God that we not be overcome by temptation, since this is in our power? These say: Why do we strive to live well, since this is in God's power? O Lord, O Father who are in heaven, lead us not into either of these temptations, but deliver us from evil. Let us hear the Lord saying, 'I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith not fail.' Let us not so suppose our faith to be in free choice that it has no need of divine help. Let us hear the Evangelist also

saying, 'He gave them power to become sons of God,' lest we suppose that what we believe is wholly not in our power; yet in both let us acknowledge his benefits. For thanks are to be given because the power was given, and prayer is to be made lest weakness succumb. This itself is the faith that works through love, as the Lord has apportioned its measure to each, so that he who glories may glory not in himself but in the Lord."

Again, if a man could by his own powers, without the grace of God and without God, overcome any temptation, he could likewise avoid sins not yet committed. This is the Pelagian heresy, as Augustine attests in On Grace and Free Choice, 29: "They say" (he is speaking of the Pelagians) "that the grace of God, which is given through faith in Jesus Christ, and which is neither law nor nature, avails only for this: that past sins be forgiven, not that future ones be avoided or opposing impulses overcome. But if this were true, then surely in the Lord's Prayer, when we had said, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,' we would not add, 'And lead us not into temptation.' But we say the former that sins may be forgiven, the latter that they may be guarded against or conquered; and this we would by no reasoning ask of the Father who is in heaven, if we could bring it about by the power of the human will."

And in book 6 against Julian, chapter 26: "But you do not depart from B1 your doctrine, by which you think that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord is so engaged only in the remission of sins that it does not help us to avoid sins and to conquer carnal desires, by pouring out charity in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us by him." B2 The Council of Milevis, recited above, says the same. And if anyone says that these things should be so understood, that by grace sins can be avoided more easily, he is convicted by the same Council and by other quite authentic testimonies recited in the thirty-ninth of the first. If anyone feigns B3 that grace is necessary for avoiding sins because it makes man recognize sins and distinguish between sins and non-sins, so that having received this discernment through grace he can avoid them by free choice, he is refuted by the same Council and by other testimonies recited in the same thirty-ninth chapter. Still, perhaps someone will be so brazen as to say that the grace

which is necessary for avoiding sins is free choice, given to man gratis 8, so that he may know how to reject evil and choose the good for himself. But this Pelagian too is refuted by what has been set out earlier, in the chapter mentioned.

Furthermore, besides these there is another falsification 9 which seems to itself subtler. It asserts that the only grace of God necessary to man for avoiding sins is that by which he so tempers the tempter's power that he does not permit him to tempt anyone beyond what he can sustain by his own powers. But this subtlety of heretical vanity is at once beaten back by the hammer of Catholic truth. For it supposes that some inferior or secondary cause could necessitate free choice to will, against the third of this second [book]. Again, free choice could then be so powerful from its natural endowments, and the tempter so powerless, that it would in no way need this grace. For however much God ‖C1 has let him go unbridled, free choice by its own powers would exceed his powers. So a person thus tempted would need no grace of God at all to overcome a temptation of this kind, and any lesser one, against what was premised in this same chapter.

Again, Christ in his human soul excelled in natural gifts, as is reasonably believed, the most excellent of the angels; and likewise his most glorious mother the blessed Virgin, and perhaps some other. There is no doubt that God could create such a one. The blessed Virgin, then, and such a creature, perhaps one already made or yet to be made, could overcome any Devil whatever by his own powers without any grace, and so could overcome the world and the flesh more easily. But "there is no power upon earth that can be compared to him," Job 41. Again, this was implicitly the error of Pelagius, and explicitly that of a certain Pelagian, namely Cassian, in his book noted above, On the Protection of God. In it, as the holy Prosper recounts in his book on behalf of the preachers of God's grace, D1 against the said book of Cassian, ch. 25, 10 he laid down twelve definitions, of which only the first was Catholic, while the remaining eleven were heretical and pregnant with Pelagian venom. In the tenth of them, as is recounted in the same chapters 25 and 20, he wrote thus: "In Job also, his most approved champion, when the Devil had demanded him for single combat, we read that divine justice made provision. For if he had gone into battle against the enemy not by his own strength but under the protection of God's grace alone, and, without any virtue of his own patience, sustained only by divine assistance, had borne those manifold masses of temptations and those ruinous things sought out by all the enemy's cruelty, how would the Devil not have repeated against him, with more justice, that slanderous cry which he had uttered before: 'Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not fenced him in, and all his substance round about? But take away your hand' 11; that is, let him fight it out with me with his own powers, 'unless he blesses you to your face'? But since, after the contest, the slanderous foe does not dare to repeat any complaint of this kind, he confesses himself conquered not by God's strength but by Job's. It must nonetheless be believed that God's grace was not wholly absent: it gave the tempter as much power as it knew Job had the strength to resist, not protecting him from the enemy's assault so as to leave no room for human virtue, but only arranging that the most violent foe should not, by driving his soul out of its wits and robbing it of sense, overwhelm him with an unequal and unjust weight of the contest."

Against him Prosper, in the same chapter 20, after many objections, asks among other things: A1 "Why, having abandoned the citadel of unconquerable truth, do you run down step by step to the Pelagian precipices, so that, with God removed further off and man separated from his sustaining, you attribute such power to free choice that it not only accepts steadfastly and with equanimity the loss of manifold resources and the bitterest end of an entire household and of all its connections, but even overcomes the unspeakable tortures of its own body by the resolve of the bare will?" Whoever, then, speaks thus slides into the Pelagian precipice. Again, he argues against him because he said that Job was protected by God's grace in the lesser temptation, namely in the loss of external goods, and not in the greater, namely in the affliction of his own body and the torments of his soul; as if, he says, that man ought to have been covered with protection from above in losses and bereavements, but in the torments of his own flesh and soul did not need to be helped. "And again: nothing more memorable is found among the palms of the saints, nothing more illustrious, than that greatness of soul by which the penalty of so many deaths, inflicted through each and every limb, does not prevail 12; and he asserts that this subsists from human virtue alone. What praise or merit will there then be that freedom of choice cannot obtain amid the pursuits of quiet and peace, that freedom which, at the end of so great a contest, you have crowned for its own powers?" Again he argues against him that Job had the grace of God by which he conquered, because he had the Holy Spirit and God by whom he conquered. Hence he says: "I ask you, then, does this man seem to you, when he was being tested with the torments we read of, to have had the Holy Spirit within him? If you say he had, it is certain that God, whom he did not forsake, helped him; but if you say that the Holy Spirit withdrew from him, the prophetic word of the same man refutes you, saying: 'For I know that my redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth,' and again, 'I shall be surrounded with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God my Saviour, whom I myself shall see,

and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this hope of mine is laid up in my bosom.' But if this is rightly understood as prophesied of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the resurrection of him who is the firstfruits of those who sleep, and of the hope of redemption which is laid up in him for all the saints, it is manifestly apparent that God's grace had not departed from its temple, and had already then exercised dominion in this holy man of its own. What it promised afterwards would be done in its apostles and martyrs, it said in these words: 'When they hand you over, do not think about how or what you are to speak. For it will be given you in that hour what you are to speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.' And further on in the same place he says: 'Was he unaware that he had from him what he had?' 13 But he says, 'With him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding,' and of him he says, 'In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the spirit of all human flesh.' And again: 'You stretch out your right hand to the work of your hands; you have indeed numbered my steps, but spare my sins; you have sealed my offences as in a bag, but you have healed my iniquity. The Lord, then, had not forsaken him whom he was healing, nor taken away his help from him to whom he was applying purifying remedies, that he might shine the more brightly.' And in chapter 21: 'But as for what you say, that God's grace must be understood not to have withdrawn wholly from Job in that it had given his tempter as much power as it knew he had the strength to resist: would you not speak more rightly and truly if, where you said "as much as it knew him to have the strength to resist," you said rather "as much as it knew it had given him the strength to resist"? For by correcting that one word you would temper with some sobriety all that glory which you wished to assign to human powers, so that that wonderful patience in so great an affliction would be ascribed both to God's help and to man's free choice. But you were afraid of diminishing the praise of human nature if you professed that virtue had been given it by God. Therefore you do not want God to be believed a co-worker in his conflict and victory, but only a spectator, so that whoever you have been able to persuade that so arduous a contest was won by the natural faculty of free choice

will not dare to doubt that in lighter matters the effects of a good will are much freer; and so he falls into the pit of that condemned opinion which says that the grace of justification is given us by God so that what we are commanded to do through free choice we may fulfil more easily through grace, etc.," as the thirty-ninth of the first book recounted more fully. And in chapter 25, after reciting that tenth definition of Cassian, Prosper refutes it and adds: "If God merely knew what Job could do, and did not also give him the ability to do it, he was a witness to his patience, not a helper; and in what will the help of grace be necessary, if so great a victory was won for him by human powers alone?" Again, at the end of the book 14, where the thirteen chapters of Pelagius the heretic, condemned in the Palestinian synod, are recited, this is set down as the twelfth: that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice. Of the thirteen chapters that follow, sanctioned in the same synod against the aforesaid thirteen condemned ones, the twelfth speaks in such a way that it confesses that when we fight against temptations and illicit desires, although we must bring there our own will as well, the victory is nonetheless not from it but from the help of our God. For otherwise what the Apostle says would not be true: "It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy." Perhaps Pelagius's proctor will say further that the foregoing must be understood thus: that God's grace is necessary to man so that temptation may be overcome meritoriously and sin avoided meritoriously, but not so that temptation be overcome simply and sin avoided simply. He will be refuted likewise, just as the thirty-ninth of the first book refuted a similar babbler. Again, how will this man escape the aforementioned sentence of the Palestinian synod? In it, besides those things which Pelagius dared to defend as best he could, the thirteen chapters mentioned were objected to him as condemned; and unless he had anathematized them with every evasion removed, he himself would have been made anathema. How, then, will this man clear himself of every evasion? And of the thirteen mentioned chapters, those sanctioned, it is said thus: "Let him confess all these things simply, without any ambiguities, if he assents to Catholic authority and to the words of Pelagius himself set out in the ecclesiastical proceedings." But how does this man confess these things simply,

and without any ambiguities, who denies and refuses outright the twelfth chapter already set forth, namely that when we fight against temptations and desires, the victory is not from our own will but from the help of our God? And scarcely, with the ambiguity of an alien gloss out of tune with every understanding, does he confess that victory over temptations is meritorious from God, although neither chapter, neither the condemned nor the sanctioned one, made any mention of meritorious victory, but spoke plainly only of victory absolutely. That is neither the common way of speaking nor of understanding. Just as the common speech is of victory absolutely, so too the common understanding is of victory absolutely; and therefore sayings of this kind are always to be taken so, as the forty-sixth of the first book taught more fully. Again, if anyone without grace can overcome temptation by his own powers alone, though not meritoriously, so could one established in grace (for grace does not hinder nature but promotes it). The man in grace 15 could therefore overcome temptations by his own powers alone, without grace or God's help, just as he could before, when he was destitute of grace, or as another can who lacks God's grace. The man in grace could therefore suffer and do all things for the overcoming of temptations and the avoiding of sins while meriting nothing at all, together with the other absurdities drawn against a similar fiction in the thirty-ninth of the first. Again, then a man could, without grace, avoid sin, at least non-meritoriously; and this is against Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice 23, where he says: "When a man knows sin, if grace does not help so that what is known may be avoided, without doubt the law works wrath," and therefore sin also. Indeed, according to the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 3, "the letter kills, but the spirit gives life." That is, according to Augustine throughout his whole book On the Spirit and the Letter, which is wholly an exposition of this saying, the letter of the law forbidding sin kills, through the mortal sin of one established under the law, unless the life-giving spirit of grace helps him. Hence the same Apostle, Romans 7: "Sin, that it might appear as sin through the good, that is, the law, worked death in me, that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment." Hence Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 3: "Observe," he says, "the Apostle

in Romans explaining what he wrote to the Corinthians, 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life'; it is to be understood rather thus, as we said above: because the letter of the law, which teaches that one must not sin, kills if the life-giving spirit is lacking. For it makes sin known rather than avoided, and therefore increased rather than diminished, because to evil concupiscence there is added also transgression of the law." And the same is said in proposition 256 of the Sentences of Prosper, excerpted from this work 16. Again, Bernard, On Grace and Free Choice 20: "Between the divine spirit and the appetite of the flesh, free choice holds a certain middle place, and, hanging between the two as on the sloping flank of a very steep mountain, it is so weakened in appetite through the flesh that, unless the Spirit through grace diligently helps its weakness, it is not only unable, ascending from strength to strength, to grasp the summit of justice, which according to the Prophet is like the mountains of God, but even, rolled down from vice to vice by its own weight, it plunges headlong." But of many similar texts let these few suffice. And if anyone should object, D1 that the proud man tempted to theft can resist; the thief tempted to adultery can resist; the adulterer tempted to murder can resist; and that many unbelievers, such as the moral Philosophers, resisted many temptations without grace and valiantly overcame them: E1 it must be said that grace is understood in many ways, as the twenty-fifth and the forty-second corollary of the first taught. To the present point, when it is said that no tempted person can resist temptation without God's grace, or overcome or conquer it, what is understood is grace freely helping: namely the Holy Spirit, and whatever help, uncreated or created, freely helps the tempted person or is freely given to the tempted person so that he may resist, overcome, or conquer temptation. This is plain from what I cited above from the blessed Prosper. For in proving that Job overcame not by his own powers but by God's grace, he shows that Job had the Holy Spirit in him, who

helped him; and that grace he calls now the Holy Spirit helping, now the grace of God, now the help of God, now God or the Lord helping, and he uses all these for the same thing. So too speaks the Palestinian synod in the two chapters alleged: for it condemns the chapter of Pelagius which said that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice, and sanctioned another chapter by which we are taught that when we fight against temptations and illicit desires, the victory is not from our own will but from the help of our God. Again, Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice 9, recites the scripture which thus stirs free choice: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." And he adds: "But for this to happen, grace helps; and unless it helps, the law will be nothing but the strength of sin." And therefore the Apostle says: "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Therefore also the victory by which sin is conquered A1 is nothing other than a gift of God helping free choice in this contest. Holy Scripture also, under such

names as help, fortitude, power, stronghold, salvation, and the like, sometimes means God himself helping, B1 strengthening, and doing the rest; but sometimes not God himself but such gifts of God. Of both senses together it is beautifully written in Ecclesiasticus 34 17 in these words: "The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, a protector of power, a stronghold of strength, a covering against the heat and a shade at noonday, a plea against offence and a help against falling, lifting up the soul and enlightening the eyes, giving health and life and blessing." That such gifts of God are understood under such names is plain most copiously in Scripture; that sometimes God himself is understood under such names is plain from the Psalmist in Psalm 17 [18], who says: "I will love you, Lord, my strength; B2 the Lord is my stronghold and my refuge, and the horn of my salvation." Many like expressions occur very often in the Psalms and elsewhere in Scripture. And because God offers himself to men freely in so many ways, and freely gives men so many kinds of gifts, all these are called by the name of grace. It is plain, therefore, that and how no tempted person, by the powers of free choice alone, without God's grace and his help, can overcome any temptation.