Book II, Chapter 6

Chapter 6. That that special help of God is his invincible will.

After it has been shown in the preceding chapters that no tempted person can overcome any temptation by the strength of free choice alone, without grace, or with grace however great, apart from some other special help of God, it remains to inquire what that help is by which the tempted overcome all trials, and without which they are overcome in all. Now since that help is not free choice, nor created grace or charity (which are the greatest created gifts of God and of the greatest help), what can it be but the divine will? For whomever God helps, he helps voluntarily, just as whatever he does outside himself he does not by nature, nor from knowledge alone, but by will, as the eighth and ninth chapters of the first part teach. Far be it, moreover, that he should help anyone by chance or by accident, for then the twenty-second, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of the first would rebuke him shamefully. The divine will, therefore, is that help without which every tempted person is overcome, as can be known from 22 of the first and from the other things already established; and it is that through which every tempted person who overcomes effectively overcomes the ‖E1 tempter,1 as 10 of the first shows together with the premises. Hence holy David, well experienced in the spiritual struggle, since he was often overcome and often overcame, speaks thus: "Wrath is in his indignation, and life in his will."2 Wrath, that is, which casts into guilt the one with whom the Lord is angry; and life, which sustains in innocence the one whom the Lord deigns to help voluntarily. Although the verse is also expounded otherwise, the whole course of that Psalm 29 shows this exposition: "I will exalt you, Lord, for you have taken me up,

and have not let my enemies rejoice over me. Lord my God, I cried to you, and you healed me; Lord, you have brought my soul up from hell, you have saved me from those descending into the pit." And then, rousing them to thanksgiving for such great benefits, he straightway adds: "Sing to the Lord, you his saints, and give praise to the memory of his holiness, for wrath is in his indignation, and life in his will,"A1 and according to the Gloss on the following verse, "That wrath is weeping, which is the whole misery of man, of guilt as well as of punishment."4 The same in Psalm 5: "Lord, you have crowned us as with a shield of your good will"; where the Gloss says: "The good will with which you have crowned us is for us like a shield against the enemy, by which we are protected, and it is itself like a crown, that is, the arms by which the enemy is overcome. This is a shield against him who, in temptations and tribulations, suggests despair; and the meaning is, your good will protects us and makes us conquer. Or thus: the shield, which takes its name from roundness, does two things, because it guards the body and crowns the head. So the gratuitous will of God, with which he calls us, is here our defense against all things, and in the future our crown." The same in Psalm 43: B1 "For they did not possess the land by their own sword, and their arm did not save them, but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, because you were pleased with them"; and Psalm 88: "You are the glory of their strength, and in your good pleasure our horn will be exalted." B2 The Gloss: "You are the glory, that is, the exaltation of the strength of those whom you not only enlighten but also empower, B3 and in your good pleasure, that is, because it has pleased you, not because we are worthy, our horn will be exalted." Likewise 2 Maccabees, last chapter: "The Lord gives victory not according to the might of arms, but as it pleases him, to the worthy."5 And lest any deceit of Pelagian malice creep up on you, B4 hear whence anyone becomes worthy (for whomever the king has wished to honor is worthy of this honor), as Esther 6 says; and Augustine says in On the Predestination of the Saints, 12: "Likewise, what I said, that the salvation of that religion never failed anyone who was worthy, and that he was not worthy whom it failed: if it is examined and asked whence anyone is worthy, there are those who say, by the human will; but we say, by grace or divine predestination." Whoever, then, is worthy of victory, is not worthy of himself, but from the gratuitous will of God, which makes him worthy of victory, and a victor.