Book II, Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII. On perseverance: what it is, and that no wayfarer 1, however much he rests on created grace, can persevere finally by the powers of Free Choice alone, or even with the help of grace, without some other special help of God.

After this we must deal with perseverance. For Pelagius in his pride presumed to assert that a man can, by the powers of free choice alone, fulfil all God's commandments and avoid all sins, as is clear from the fourth of this second book; and therefore that he can also persevere finally from himself, as the various books of blessed Augustine published against the Pelagians bear witness. First, then, we must see what perseverance itself is. Tully, in the second book of his Old Rhetoric 2, defines it thus: "Perseverance is a steady and lasting abiding in a well-considered plan." Aristotle, in Ethics 7, 7, defines persevering itself this way 3: "Persevering consists in holding fast," and, for its difference from being continent, he adds: "But continence consists in overcoming, just as not being conquered, in conquering; for which reason continence is also more choiceworthy than perseverance." Now that we know what perseverance is, it remains to show, as a consequence, that no wayfarer burdened with a corrupted body, established in whatever created grace, can persevere finally by the powers of free choice alone, or even with the help of grace, without some other special help of God. For by the preceding chapter, no wayfarer, however full of grace, can so avoid mortal sin. Likewise, no wayfarer, however full of grace, can so avoid temptation to mortal sin, as

the preceding Corollary inferred; and this is sufficiently clear from the preceding chapter, and appears also very evidently of itself, and if he is tempted by any mortal sin whatever, he cannot ‖A1 avoid it, as the fourth and fifth of this book show. Likewise, almost all the arguments that proved similar conclusions about overcoming temptations and avoiding sins in the four preceding chapters will prove this conclusion; and the whole second chapter of the first book likewise tells in favour of this conclusion. To the same end there are quite many authorities of canonical Scripture and of the Doctors, some of which were cited above; a good many more, if anyone wishes, A2 remain to be cited, and of these I shall cite a few, and briefly. Psalm 118 says to the Lord God: "By your ordinance the day continues," that is, the angel or the man bright with the light of justice. In Joshua 14 also Caleb is written to have said: "The Lord has granted me life, as he promised, up to the present day; forty-five years have passed since the Lord spoke this word; today I am eighty-five years old, as strong as I was at that time; the strength of that time

remains in me to this day, both for fighting and for walking." But through whom has such strength continued for him, B1 if not through him who promised in Numbers 14: "I will bring my servant Caleb into this land"? And Deuteronomy 29: "He led you," says Moses, "forty years through the desert; your garments have not worn out, nor have the sandals of your feet been worn away by age; you have not eaten bread, you have not drunk wine and strong drink, that you might know that he is the Lord your God." But since, according to the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 10, "all things happened to them in figure," B2 what could be better figured by these things than this: that, with the Lord leading us through all the years of this pilgrimage through the pathless desert of this world, and himself granting perseverance, our spiritual garments have not worn out, that is, the virtues; and the sandals of our feet, that is, the gifts of genuine charity, or of twofold love, namely of God and neighbour, have not been consumed by age through misuse; we do not eat the bread of doctrine that would strengthen our heart without him 4; we do not drink the wine and strong drink of devotion that would gladden our heart

perseveringly without him; and yet we have not failed, that we may know that he is the Lord our God himself, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom all things are and hold together; who also sustains all things by the word of his power and bears them up, as the same Apostle testifies in Romans 11 and Hebrews 1. Similar is that of Genesis 27: "With grain, wine and oil I have established him" 5. What else do these sound but perseverance: "Preserve me, Lord"; "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established," that is, according to Augustine, the just, or the Apostles; "He set my feet upon a rock"; "Command, O God, your strength"; "Confirm, O God, what you have wrought in us"; "You who founded the earth upon its own stability"; "Keep us, Lord, as the apple of the eye"; "Unless the Lord keeps the city, in vain does he watch who keeps it"; and many similar things in many Psalms. And the most eloquent Isaiah says in chapter 26: "Zion, the city of our strength, a Savior; a wall and a rampart shall be set in it" for guarding, C1 namely the city. Holy David too, in the last chapter of 1 Chronicles, praying thus to the Lord for the people devoted to him: "Lord God, keep for ever this will of their heart,

and let this mind remain always in reverence of you." What else did he ask but perfected perseverance? And why did he ask it of God, if it were not given by him, but each could have it by his own powers, as the forty-sixth of the first [book] argued more fully? Hence blessed Augustine, in On the Good of Perseverance 2 6, shows the same conclusion by the same argument: D1 "Why," he says, "is this perseverance ‖D2 asked of God, if it is not given by God? Or is this too a mocking petition, when there is asked of him what is known not to be given by him, but, he not giving it, to be in man's power? Just as that giving of thanks too is mocking, if thanks are given to God for what he himself neither gave nor made: but do not be deceived, says the Apostle, God is not mocked." And he leans heavily on this argument almost through that whole book, as is clear in chapters 3, 6 and 9, where he also cites this from the blessed Martyr Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer, which is his fifth letter, and in many other places. And as that David prayed to God for the perseverance of his people, D3 so also our David, the Lord Christ, prayed to God the Father for his people: "Father,"

he says, "holy one, keep them in your name, those you have given me, that they may be one, as we also are; while I was with them, I kept them in your name; those you gave me I guarded, and none of them perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled"; and below: "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from evil." His Priests follow his teaching and pray thus: "Keep, we beg, Lord, your Church with perpetual mercy; and because without you human mortality falters, may it always by your help be drawn away from harmful things and directed toward saving ones" 7. Likewise 3 Kings 13 8: the Lord says to Elijah, E1 "I have left for myself in Israel seven thousand men, whose knees have not been bent before Baal; and every mouth that has not adored him, kissing the hand *E2" 9. Whoever, then, does not bend his knees before Baal, so as to be turned aside from justice in deed,

nor has adored him with the mouth of the heart or of the body, nor kissed his hand in thought or speech, is kept by the Lord not by his own powers or merits, but by perseverance freely given. For the Lord would not say, "I have left for myself seven thousand men," etc., if it were not he, but they themselves who rather left themselves to the Lord, while through themselves, and not through him, they abandoned the idols. For this is how the Apostle argues in Romans 11, showing that the remnant of Israel are saved through grace ‖A1. "Has God," says the Apostle, "rejected his people? Far from it. Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah? What does the divine reply say to him? 'I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bent their knees before Baal.' So then, in this present time also, a remnant has been saved according to the election of the grace of God; but if by grace, then no longer from works." From the fact, then, that God says, "I have left for myself," etc., the Apostle hints that God did this, not they themselves, and that God did this freely, that is, according to the election of grace, not for merits. For if he had done this for their merits, they themselves by their merits would in a way have done it first and principally. Thus, then, he says,

in this time also a remnant has been saved according to the election of the grace of God, just as (supply: in that time) those remnants, or those who were left, were saved, not by themselves, that is, but by God, and freely, not from works. B1 Blessed Augustine too, in On the Good of Perseverance 54, treating this Apostolic argument, speaks thus: "The Apostle, to show that the remnant had been left by God's grace, not by the merits of their works, went on to add: 'Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah? How he pleads with God against Israel,' etc. But what does the divine reply say to him? 'I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bent the knee before Baal.' For he does not say, 'they were left to me,' or 'they left themselves to me,' but 'I have left for myself.' So then, in this present time also, a remnant has been saved through the election of grace; but if by grace, then no longer from works." Likewise Isaiah 40: "The everlasting God, the Lord, who created the ends of the earth, B2 will not fail, nor labour; he gives strength to the weary, and multiplies fortitude and strength to those who are not; boys shall fail and labour." The Gloss: that is, those living like boys; "and young men shall fall in weakness,"

namely those presuming on their own virtues; and he adds: "But those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall take wings like eagles, they shall run and not labour, they shall walk and not faint." And below, at 48: "They have been established upon the God of Israel"; and below, C1 "Thus says the Lord, who guides you in the way in which you walk." Likewise Jeremiah 32: "Behold, I will gather them from all lands, and bring them back to this place, and make them dwell securely, and I will give them one heart and soul" (or, in another reading, "one way") "that they may fear me all their days, and I will make with them an everlasting covenant, and I will not cease to do them good, and I will put my fear in their heart, that they may not depart from me." Hence it is clear that both the return from evil and the abiding in good finally, that is, all their days, by an everlasting covenant, so that one never departs from the Lord, which is perseverance to the end, is not from man sufficiently nor antecedently, but from God. C2 Hence Augustine too, in On the Good of Perseverance 2, shows the same conclusion from the same authority: "This," he says, namely perseverance, "God promised, saying:

'I will put my fear in their heart, that they may not depart from me.' What is that but to say: so great and such will be my fear, which I will put in their heart, that they cleave to me perseveringly?" With this holy David also, the lyre of the Holy Spirit, most fittingly harmonizes, in Psalm 79, saying: D1 "God of hosts, turn us back, look from heaven and see, and visit this vine," as to conversion from evil; "and perfect it, which your right hand has planted," as to perfection in good; "and upon the son of man whom you have strengthened for yourself, let your hand be," namely perseveringly sustaining and confirming, "upon the man of your right hand," whom, namely, the Holy Spirit, the finger of your right hand, was turning from the left to the right; "and upon the son of man, whom you have strengthened for yourself," by in no way letting him go; "and we shall not depart from you." In the prophetic manner he puts the past for the future, as if he were to say plainly: if you do these things for each of us, we shall not depart from you, but shall persevere with you to the end. And therefore he adds the rest in the future: "You will give us life," namely eternal life, because "he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved," Matthew 10. And therefore

he added: "Lord God of hosts, turn us back," namely from evil to good, "and show your face," namely your will, by making us persevere finally in good, "and we shall be saved." Hence blessed Augustine too, in On the Good of Perseverance 11, speaks thus: "After the fall of man, God willed that man's approaching him should belong to his grace alone, and willed that man's not withdrawing from him should belong to his grace alone; this he placed in him in whom we obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things; and in this way, as he works that we approach, so he works that we not depart. On account of which it was said to him through the prophet: 'Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, and upon the son of man whom you have strengthened for yourself, and we shall not depart from you.' He, surely, is not the first Adam, in whom we depart from him, but the last Adam, upon whom his hand is placed, that we not depart from him; for Christ whole with his members is for the sake of the Church, which is his body, his fullness. Since therefore

the hand of God is upon him that we not depart from him, the work of God has surely reached us; this is the work in the hand of God 10, by which work of God it comes about that we are in Christ, remaining with God. For in Christ we have obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things: this, therefore, is the hand of God, not ours, that we not depart from God." Likewise 2 Corinthians, last chapter: "We pray," A1 says the Apostle, "for your perfection"; and what else is this than to pray for their perfected perseverance? But of whom did he pray this, if not of God? From whom, then, is it given, if not from him? The same, to the Romans 14: "God is able to establish him," about which no one doubts, taken to the letter 11. So the Apostle, so great, would in no way teach this unless he wished something else to be understood, namely that God by his own power establishes everyone who stands, not by that man's, since he does not say, "a man is able to establish himself," A2 but "God is able to establish him." Hence Augustine, in On the Good of Perseverance 18, speaks thus: "By the will of God he stands who stands; for God is able to establish him; not therefore himself, but God." The same, in On Rebuke and Grace 56, treating the same authority, thus: "The Apostle, looking to the predestined, says, 'But he will stand'; and lest

they arrogate this to themselves: 'For God,' he says, 'is able to establish him.' He, therefore, gives perseverance who is able to establish those who stand, B1 that they may stand most perseveringly." And the same Apostle above, in the fourth of the same [epistle], spoke similarly, when he said that Abraham did not waver at the promise of God, knowing most fully that whatever God has promised he is able also to do, that is, would powerfully do what he promised; for otherwise he would reasonably have wavered. This is also clear through Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 52, On the Predestination of the Saints 3 and 12, as was cited more fully in the forty-sixth of the first. In the same way also the blessed Apostle Jude speaks, in these words: B2 "To him who is able to keep you without sin, and to set you before the sight of his glory without blemish in glorious exultation," etc. B3 Hence Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 17: "The Apostle Jude," he says, "when he says, 'To him who is able,' etc., does he not show most plainly that it is a gift of God to persevere in good to the end? For what else does it mean, 'who is able to keep you without offense, and to set

you before the sight of his glory without blemish in joy,' except good perseverance?" Likewise, who would be so foolish as to deny that perseverance is a gift of God, when the most holy Jeremiah says: "I will put my fear in their heart, that they may not depart from me"? Many other testimonies cited above also bear witness to this, since also, according to the blessed Apostle James, C1 "Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights," James 1; and what gift is better for the wayfarer than perseverance? What Christian, again, is so lukewarm as not to pray to God that he may persevere finally in good? But for what does he ask perseverance of God, if it is not given by him? And whoever concedes that it is a gift of God will necessarily concede, as a consequence, that it is not from man sufficiently or antecedently, but from God. For if it were thus in man from himself, it would not be so fittingly called a gift of God as a gift of man, nor would it be fittingly asked of him, as the forty-sixth of the first showed more fully; whereas nothing seems more fitting than to ask this of him C2 who gives it. The Apostle also says to the Ephesians 2: "By grace

you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God." This, then, is the Apostle's causal statement, D1 "because it is the gift of God, therefore it is not from you." And by this reasoning Augustine, in On the Good of Perseverance, proves that it is not for man from himself but from God; hence in the second chapter he says thus: "Let us see whether this perseverance, of which it was said, 'He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved,' is a gift of God; for if it is not, how is it true what the Apostle says, 'To you it has been given, for Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him'? One of these pertains to the beginning, the other to the end; and each is a gift of God, because each is said to be given. But what can be said why perseverance to the end should not be given in Christ, to whom it is given to suffer for Christ? Or, to speak more explicitly, to whom it is given to die for Christ? D2 For the Apostle Peter too, showing that this is a gift of God, says, 'It is better, if the will of God so wills, to suffer doing good than doing evil.' When he says, 'if the will of God so wills,' he shows that it is given from above, and not to all the Saints, that they suffer for Christ;

for those whom the will of God does not will to come to the experience and glory of suffering do not thereby fail to come to the kingdom of God, if they persevere in Christ to the end. If anyone says that this perseverance is not given to those who die in Christ through bodily sickness or by any chance whatever, whereas a far more difficult perseverance is given to those by whom even death itself for Christ is undertaken: but he for whom nothing is difficult gives both; for this, namely the easier, God promised, saying: 'I will put my fear in their heart, that they may not depart from me.'" And below, in the same: "By the very fact that perseverance is asked of God, he shows that it is a gift of God, and for that reason, because it is a gift of God, that it is not for man from himself, nor in man's power if he himself has not given it." Hence he speaks thus: "Why is this perseverance asked of God, if it is not given by him? Or is this too a mocking petition,

when there is asked of him what is known not to be given by him, but, he not giving it, to be in man's power? Just as that giving of thanks too is mocking, if thanks are given to God for what he himself neither gave nor made; but do not be deceived, says the Apostle: God is not mocked. O man, God is the witness not only of your words, but also of your thoughts. If you truly and faithfully ask something of so great a rich man, believe that you receive what you ask from him from whom you ask it. Do not honour him with your lips and exalt yourself over him in your heart, believing it to be from yourself for you, what you pretend to pray for from him. Or is this perseverance perhaps not asked of him, when in the very prayer that is called the Lord's, when it is prayed by the Saints, almost nothing else than perseverance is understood to be asked?" Augustine also makes this clear through the individual petitions of that prayer, according to the exposition of the blessed Martyr Cyprian in the book he composed on this matter, whose title is On the Lord's Prayer, and which is the fifth among his letters, and likewise according to his own exposition, quite diffusely and plainly in the four following chapters. A1 Hence also in chapter 3 he cites Cyprian

saying: "We say, 'Hallowed be your name,' not that we wish for God that he be hallowed by our prayers, but that we ask of him that his name be hallowed in us. For by whom is God hallowed, who himself hallows? But because he himself said, 'Be holy, for I too am holy,' we rather ask this and beg it, that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be." And below, in the same: "This hallowing," he says, "that it may remain in us, we pray; this we ask day and night, that the hallowing and quickening, which is taken up by God's grace, be preserved by his protection." And Augustine adds: "In hallowing, therefore, we ask of him perseverance, that is, that we persevere in holiness." This Doctor understands it so when, being hallowed, we say, "Hallowed be your name": "For what else is it to ask for what we have received, than that this too be granted us, that we not cease to have it?" And so he continues below in the same chapter, and in the rest in order; and the very same is found to the same conclusion in On Rebuke and Grace 16 and 17, where in chapter 16 he says thus: "We certainly cannot deny that perseverance

in good, bringing it to completion to the end, is a great gift of God, nor that it is from anyone but him of whom it is written, 'Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.'" And in chapter 17 he proves the same by many authorities of sacred Scripture: "If we say," he says, "that perseverance is so much man's that it is not from God, that is first made void which the Lord said to Peter, and it is Luke 22: 'I have prayed for you, that your faith not fail.' For what did he pray for him but perseverance to the end, which, if it were from man for man, would not have to be asked of God? Then, when the Apostle says, namely 2 Corinthians, last chapter, 'We pray God that you do no evil,' beyond doubt he prays to God for perseverance for them; for he does not do nothing evil who abandons the good, and, turning away from what he ought not to leave, inclines into evil, not persevering in good. In that place also where he says, 'I give thanks to God,' etc., 'for he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ,' what else does he promise them, by God's mercy, than perseverance in good to the end of life? Likewise where he says, 'Epaphras greets you,

always striving for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and full in all the will of God': what is 'that you may stand' but 'that you may persevere'? What is it also that we read in the Acts of the Apostles: 'And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed'? Who could be ordained to eternal life except by the gift of perseverance, since he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved? By what salvation but eternal?" Here he also hints at a notable argument, which is of this kind: if God preordains anyone to some certain end, he preordains for him all the media necessary for this end, and whatever he preordains for anyone, these he also gives. And in On the Good of Perseverance 3 he makes a similar argument, namely that whoever wills or asks some certain end, wills and asks whatever medium without which he cannot attain that end. Hence he says thus: "When we say, 'Your kingdom come,' do we ask anything else but that it come, and that for us, what we do not doubt will come for all the Saints? Therefore here too, those who are already Saints, what do they pray, except that they persevere in that holiness which has been given them? For not otherwise would God's kingdom come to you 12,

which is certain to come not to others, but to those who persevere to the end." And still further, in the same chapter, namely in On Rebuke and Grace 17, he proves the same through this petition of the Lord's prayer, "Hallowed be your name," according to his own exposition and that of the blessed Martyr Cyprian, as I cited above from chapter 3 of On the Good of Perseverance. The same, below in the same, 26: "If you confess that to persevere in good to the end is a gift of God, why do these *E1 receive this gift, and those do not receive it? I think you know this together with me; or if you say that it pertains to man's free choice, which you defend not according to God's grace but against it, that whoever perseveres in good, or does not persevere, he does not persevere thus by God's giving, but by human will's doing." And the same, in On Nature and Grace 27: E2 "They are admonished," he says, "lest by ascribing God's gifts to their own power and exalting themselves they perish more grievously than if they did nothing good; to whom it is said, 'With fear and trembling work out your own salvation

for it is God who works in us both to will and to work.'" And, to say long things briefly, the whole book of Augustine On the Good of Perseverance, and almost the whole book of his On Rebuke and Grace from the sixteenth chapter on, consider that they demonstrate this conclusion, that perseverance is not for man from himself, by this medium, that it is a gift of God. Likewise Jerome, on that of Daniel 1: 496A·1 "God gave Daniel grace and mercy in the sight of the prince of the eunuchs": "From this," he says, "we understand, as a matter of necessity, that if the saints are sometimes loved by unbelievers, it is of God's mercy, not of the goodness of perverse men": ‖496A·2 with which also Psalm 105 agrees, saying, "He gave them into mercies in the sight of the men who had taken them captive." Hear still, I beg, Augustine thundering the trumpet of the Holy Spirit, in On Rebuke and Grace 59: "In this place of miseries, where human life on earth is a temptation, virtue is perfected in weakness. What virtue? That he who glories may glory in the Lord; and therefore, regarding perseverance itself in good, God did not wish his saints to glory in their own strength,

but in himself, who not only gives them help, such as he gave to the first man, without which they cannot persevere if they wish, but also works in them even the willing, so that, since they will not persevere unless they both are able and willing, both the possibility and the will of persevering is given them by the bounty of divine grace. So much indeed is their will kindled by the Holy Spirit ‖496B·1 that they can for this reason, because they so will; and so will for this reason, because God works that they will. For if, in so great a weakness of this life, their own will were left to them, so that they might remain, if they wished, in the help of God without which they could not persevere, and God did not work in them that they will, then amid so many and so great temptations their will would succumb through its own weakness, and for that reason they could not persevere, because, failing through weakness of will, they would not will, or would not will so that they could. Provision has therefore been made for the weakness of the human will, that it be moved by divine grace indeclinably and insuperably; and therefore, though weak, it would not fail, nor be overcome by any adversity." And in chapter 49: "But now, that is, after the fall, for those who lack such help it is already a penalty of sin; but those to whom

it is given, it is given according to grace, not according to debt, and so much the more is it given through Jesus Christ our Lord, to those to whom it pleased God to give it, that not only is that help present without which we cannot remain even if we will, but also that it is so great and of such a kind that we will. For through this grace of God there comes about in us, in receiving the good and holding it perseveringly, not only that we can do what we will, 496C·1 but also that we will what we can, which was not so in the first man." And in 53: "To the first man, who in that good in which he was made had received the ability not to sin, the ability not to die, the ability not to forsake that good itself, was given the help of perseverance, not that by it he would be made to persevere, but without which he could not persevere through free choice. But now, to the saints predestined by grace to the kingdom of God, no such help of perseverance is given, but such that perseverance itself is given to them: not only that without this gift they cannot be persevering, but also that through this gift they are nothing but persevering. For he did not only say, 'Without me you can do nothing'; but also said, 'You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you,

…that you may go and bear fruit, and that your fruit may remain. By these words he showed that he gave them not only righteousness but also perseverance in it. Likewise, to posit that a man in grace can persevere in grace by himself D1 was the error of Pelagius. This is clear from Augustine, On the Good of Perseverance 3.13 There he wishes to show, through the petitions of the Lord's Prayer and following the exposition of the blessed martyr Cyprian, that perseverance in the good is a gratuitous gift of God and does not come to man from himself. He says: "Read somewhat more attentively the exposition of the blessed martyr Cyprian, in the book that he composed on this subject, whose title is On the Lord's Prayer, and see how many years before, against the poisons the Pelagians were to produce, what an antidote he prepared here. For there are the things that the Catholic Church chiefly defends against them. One of these is that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, since they are gifts of God, and that by the grace of God all the merits of the righteous are even conferred." And further on in the same work: "The third of these I have put last in this place; only this one is not treated except in the aforesaid book of the glorious martyr.14 But of the two others he discourses there with such success that the aforesaid new heretics, enemies of the grace of Christ, are found to have been refuted long before they were born." Cyprian, then, speaking of these merits of the saints, which are nothing but gifts of God, says thus that perseverance too is a gift of God: "We say therefore," he says, "Hallowed be your name," etc., as was recited above. The same is clear from the authorities of Augustine, of the Council of Milevis and of the Synod of Palestine, as the third chapter of this second book alleged above. Hence also in the Sentences of Prosper, proposition 131, it says: "As there are two offices of medicine, one by which sickness is healed, the other by which health is guarded, so there are two gifts of grace: one that takes away the desire of the flesh, the other that makes the virtue of the soul persevere." The like of this, from the book On Nature and Grace 26, the fourth chapter of this second book recited above. A like passage also, On Genesis according to the Letter 8, 19,

is written in these words: "For man is not such a thing that, once made, if the one who made him forsook him, he could do anything good as if of himself. Rather, the whole of his good action is to be turned to him by whom he was made, and to be made by him ever righteous, devout, wise and blessed, and not to withdraw, as one does from a physician of the body, to be healed and go away. For the physician was a worker upon the body, serving from outside nature, which works from within under God, who works all health by that twofold work of providence of which we spoke above. So man ought not to turn to God in such a way that, when he has been made righteous by him, he departs; he ought to turn so that he may always be made so by him. For precisely in not departing from him, he is justified and illuminated and beatified by his presence, God working and guarding, while he rules the obedient and subject man. For God does not work the righteous man, that is, by justifying him, as we were saying (as a man works the earth so that it may be cultivated and fruitful, and when he has worked it goes away, leaving it ploughed or sown or watered, or whatever else, the work that was done remaining when the worker has gone away), in such a way that, if God departed, what he made would remain in the one departing. It is rather as air, in the presence of light, is not made luminous but is being made so; for if it had been made luminous, it would not be being made so at all, but would remain luminous even in the absence of light. So man is illuminated with God present to him, but in his absence is at once darkened. One departs from him not by intervals of place but by turning the will away." From this passage the 285th proposition of Prosper's Sentences is excerpted, and chapter 20 follows: "He, assuredly, who is unchangeably good works the good man and guards him. We must always be made good by him and always be perfected, clinging to him and remaining in that turning which is toward him. Of him it is said, 'It is good for me to cling to God,' and to him it is said, 'I will keep my strength for you.'"

Likewise Anselm, On Concord 9, says: "In what ways, after the same rectitude has been received, grace helps free choice to keep what it has received, although I cannot count them all (for it does this in many ways), still it will not be useless to say something about it. No one, certainly, keeps this rectitude once received except by willing, but one cannot will it without having it, and one can by no means have it except through grace. As no one received it except with grace going before, so no one keeps it unless the same grace follows. Indeed, although it is kept through free choice, yet when this rectitude is kept, it is not to be imputed to free choice as much as to grace, since free choice has and keeps it only through grace going before and following. And grace so follows its gift that it never fails to give it, whether it be great or small, unless free choice, by willing something else, forsakes the rectitude it received." The same author, in his Meditations, in a prayer entitled "For Enemies",15 says: "Almighty and merciful Lord Jesus Christ, C1 as I could begin nothing good without you, so I cannot complete or keep it without you."

Corollary

Corollary: That no wayfarer16 can persevere for any time at all by the powers of free choice alone, or of grace alone, or of both together, without another special help of God.

Hence it is manifest that no man in this state can, by the powers of free choice alone or of created grace however great, without another help of God, persevere, let alone finally, but not even for any time at all. This is sufficiently clear from what precedes. Likewise, if someone could so persevere for one hour, then since at the end of that hour he would be as strong spiritually as before, or perhaps rather stronger, he could still persevere as easily or more easily through the next hour, and so through all of them, and thus finally, contrary to the chapter just set out. Likewise, if someone could so persevere for one hour, he could also do so finally. For the end of that hour will perhaps be for him the end of life. If of two equals one who is to live many years can so persevere for an hour, the other, who is to live only an hour, can too. Hence he can so persevere finally, which the chapter set out above does not allow.

Likewise, as the second chapter of the first book teaches,17 everything that is natural and not such per se, but is mutable into what is not such, if it is to remain unchanged, must continually lean on something fixed per se. So too must every righteous man continually lean on God. E1 Hence Isaiah 50: "Let him hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God." On which the Gloss says: "That human frailty may be sustained by the divine majesty." And in the last chapter of the Song of Songs: "Who is this that comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon my beloved, or her own?"18 E2 Hence Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice 15, says: "So necessary is it for man that the ungodly be justified by God's grace not only, but that when he has been justified grace also walk with him, and that he lean upon it lest he fall. For this reason it is written in the Song of Songs of the Church herself: Who is this that comes up whitened, leaning upon her cousin?19

For she is whitened who could not be white by herself. Now that she has been made white she walks well, but only if she leans perseveringly upon him by whom she was whitened."