De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 10
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, 678A–686C; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/10/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[678A]
CHAPTER 10. He draws distinctions concerning necessity and freedom.

[678A–678C]
So that what has been set out above may be made clearer, it must be known that necessity and freedom are spoken of in many ways. To begin with, necessity is taken per se and first for the vehemence of being of that which per se and first is necessary to be, which is God; and so it cannot properly be defined, as the thirteenth of the first teaches [n1]. It is nonetheless described and made known in some fashion, and this better by affirmation than by negation, that is, by the vehemence and firmness of being than by the impossibility, or non-possibility, of not being, as the seventh part of that thirteenth shows. Necessity is taken in other ways for natural necessity, for fatal necessity, for the necessity of violent compulsion, and for the necessity of spontaneous stability of permanence, or also of firmness, which (although less properly) is also called the necessity of immutability. For necessity, as was said at the beginning, is better described by affirmation than by negation. Hence Isaiah 46: "My counsel shall stand, and all my will shall be done"; and 2 Timothy 2: "The firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows who are his"; and Psalm 116 [117]: "The truth of the Lord remains for ever"; and Psalm 32 [33]: "But the counsel of the Lord remains for ever, the thoughts of his heart from generation to generation." The Gloss: that is, They are not changeable but eternal; and his predestination is immutable, in which all things are laid up, together with many similar texts cited more fully in the twenty-third of the first; as Augustine and Anselm also speak, as the proof of the first Corollary of this book recites and cites.

[678C–678D]
There is also preceding and following necessity, as the second of this shows; and since in as many ways as one of a pair of opposites is spoken of, the other will be spoken of in as many, necessity and freedom are in a certain way opposed. Freedom is spoken of in contrary fashion in the same ways: namely, freedom from necessity taken in the first way, freedom from natural necessity, from fatal necessity, from violent necessity, from preceding necessity, and from following necessity. Of all these, however, the three set out first, namely natural, fatal, and violent-compulsion necessity, are repugnant to the freedom of the rational creature, and to merit as well. Hence these three can be brought back to one general necessity, namely the necessity adverse or contrary to freedom, which for that reason removes freedom and excuses sin; and another can be called spontaneous necessity, consenting, free, and compatible with freedom and merit, according to the distinctions of Augustine and Anselm on necessity set out in the proof of the first Corollary of this book.

[678D–678E]
So all the authorities that deny necessity of the rational creature deny only this first necessity, namely the one that is adverse and contrary to freedom and removes freedom; they do not deny the second, namely the spontaneous, consenting to freedom, which is also compatible with freedom. Hence also, for the most part, when they deny necessity, as it were setting themselves against necessity by this conjunction "but" (sed), or another like it, which according to the grammarians, and according to the truth, and in the common way of speaking is called adversative, because, opposing the preceding statement, it posits its opposite, they affirm will or freedom, saying that someone did or does this or that not by necessity but by freedom, or will, or free power, signifying that they reject only the necessity adverse to the will, or even to freedom. Hence the Apostle to Philemon: "I wished to do nothing without your counsel, so that your good might not be as if from necessity, but voluntary." And 1 Corinthians 7: "He who has determined in his heart, being firm, having no necessity but having power over his own will, and has judged this in his heart, to keep his virgin, does well." Likewise Ambrose, On the Trinity 2, 3, speaks thus: "Paul says that one and the same Spirit works all things, dividing to each as he wills, that is, according to the free choice of the will, not in obedience to necessity." Likewise Augustine, On True Religion 25: God judged such servants of his to be better if they served him freely, which could in no way happen if they served not by will but by necessity. The same, On Faith to Peter 57 [n2]: "Hold most firmly that the first humans were created with free choice, and that they sinned not by necessity but by their own will"; and he says the same very often in many other places.

[678E–679A]
Anselm also often says such things, Why God Became Man 2, chapters 5, 10 and 17, as the first Corollary of this book cited in part; and he speaks thus also in On Harmony 7: "God neither foreknows nor predestines anyone to be just by necessity; for he does not have justice who does not keep it likewise by free will." Therefore, although what is foreknown and predestined is necessary, some things foreknown and predestined nonetheless do not come about by the necessity that precedes the thing and makes it, but by that which follows the thing, as we said above. For God, though he predestines, does not bring those things about by compelling the will or by resisting the will, but by leaving it in its own power; he also says such things often elsewhere. Boethius speaks thus, On the Consolation of Philosophy 5, the last prose; the Decretum speaks thus, 23, question 4, the canon Nabuchodonosor [n3], and further on; and all speak thus, greater and lesser, learned and unlearned alike, saying that someone does something not by necessity but by free will.

[679A–679C]
Further, for a fuller understanding of the books of our Doctors, it must be known that it is posited in three or four ways that human acts are subject to the necessity of nature. For certain heretics, namely the Manichaeans, said that man does all his evils by the necessity of the nature of his evil soul. But certain others, later and as it were modern, posited that the human will is merely passive; hence, as the third of the second shows, they had to posit consequently that all acts of the human will, like the appetite of a brute, proceed necessarily from necessity of nature. A third group said that the human will is passive and active, but first passive, and this by necessity of nature, and that, passive in this way, it then acts further from necessity of nature like brutes. The fourth necessity of the will, which is posited by some with respect to the stars, seems not inaptly reducible likewise to necessity of nature, though it is perhaps more properly placed under fatal necessity. Others, however, like the Stoics, according to Boethius on On Interpretation 1, the last chapter, and also some astrologers [n4] (as Augustine often recounts, and above all in City of God 5, and in his Questions on the Old and New Testament), and the Priscillianist heretics, as the twenty-eighth of the first cited from Gregory, posited that all things come about from the fatal necessity of the stars. Others again, like Cicero and Pelagius, asserted that, supposing foreknowledge, predestination and reprobation, and providence of future things in God, all things would come about from a necessity compelling violently, as the sixth and thirty-fourth of the first recited more fully. And all these, in any sin whatever of a man, wholly excused the man, and wholly accused nature, fate, or God; indeed, necessarily always God, the Author of nature and of fate, of foreknowledge, of predestination and of reprobation.

[679C–679D]
For these Manichaeans posited two first natures, contrary and eternal, one good and the other evil, as the first and twenty-sixth of the first recite more fully; and consequently they further posited two souls in every man, imprinted by those two natures correspondingly, one good, the effective cause of all man's good works, the other evil, the producer of all evils, as is plain from Augustine, On the Two Souls against the Manichaeans, On Nature and Grace, On the Good of Perseverance [n5], On True Religion, and many other places. They also said that that evil soul does by nature whatever it does, that is, by necessity of nature; so that the man is excused in every evil, and only the very nature of the soul, or its author, is accused. Hence Augustine, Against Julian 5, 9: "Christians, he says, do not, as you pretend, say with the Manichaeans that there is in their flesh a necessity of evil (an evil which those people falsely claim to be substantial and coeternal with God), but they say soundly with the Apostle: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind."

[679D–679E]
The same, On Nature and Grace 1: "I have seen, he says, a man kindled with most burning zeal against those who, when they ought in their sins to accuse the human will, accuse human nature instead and try to excuse the man through it." So these too must say, consequently, that a man cannot avoid sin, by reason of the pure necessity of nature. Hence Jerome, letter 32 to Pope Damasus [n6]: "Free choice is so confessed, he says, that we say we always need the help of God, and that both those err who say with the Manichaean that a man cannot avoid sin, and those who with Jovinian assert that a man cannot sin; for each takes away the freedom of choice." Yet the Manichaeans themselves said that a man who sins, since he sinned by necessity of nature, must be wholly excused, and nature or its author alone must be accused. This opinion, though it be too crude and gross, once deceived Augustine, as he himself attests, Confessions 5, 10, in these words: "It seemed to me that it is not we who sin, but some other nature in us that sins; and it pleased my pride to be outside guilt, and, when I had done something evil, not to confess that I had done it, so that you might heal my soul, since it sinned against you; but I loved to excuse myself, and to accuse some other thing that was with me and yet was not I; and therefore my sin was the more incurable, in that I thought I was not a sinner." His book On the Customs of the Manichaeans likewise bears witness to this, and it is [likewise] evident to those who read his life.

[679E–680A]
Others also, positing some necessity or other of nature, wished to excuse themselves as sinners and to accuse nature. Hence blessed Jerome, letter 36 to Amandus the priest, On Various Questions, in the solution of the second question, says thus: "We all favor our vices, and what we do by our own will we refer to the necessity of nature." Likewise Augustine, On True and False Penance [n7], last chapter: "Let us not, then, when sinning, say: I could not do otherwise; nor is it any wonder that I am given over to fornication, since I was created of such a nature and frailty; for it is frailty, not will, that compels me to commit crimes. He errs who is thus deceived; for nature is such that anyone can resist the evil to which he subjects himself by choice."

[680A]
The second group, likewise supposing that human acts are subject to fatal necessity, excuse the man who sins, accusing fate or God instead. Hence Ammonius Erineus [n8], in his commentary on Aristotle's book On Interpretation, on the last chapter of the first, reciting opinions about the outcomes of future things, says thus: "Nor will you find men of any unlearned disposition at all neglecting meditation on this theorem; but these, as though all things were done by necessity, try to refer the causes of what they sin in to fate, or to divine and daemonic providence; as someone unlearnedly says in Homer: I am not the cause, but Jupiter and fate."

[680A–680C]
Likewise Augustine, on that verse of Psalm 31 [32], "I said, I will confess" (or "I will declare," according to the translation he expounds) "against myself my injustice to the Lord," speaks thus: "Many declare their iniquity, but against the Lord God himself, when they are found in their sins and say, God willed this. For if a man says, I did not do it, or: what you charge was done is no sin, he declares neither against himself nor against God; if he says, I did it, and it is a sin, but God willed it, what then did I do? This is to declare against God. Perhaps you will say, No one says this; who is there who says, God willed this? Many say even this; but even those who do not say it say something else. What do they say? Fate did it to me; my stars did it. So now they want to reach God by a detour; by a detour they want to reach God to accuse him, they who refuse to come by the short way to God to appease him; and they say, Fate did it to me. What is fate? My stars did it; what are the stars? Surely these that we behold in the sky; and who made them? God; who ordained them? God; so you see what you wished to say: God made me sin; so he is unjust, you are just, since if he had not made it, you would not have sinned. Take away these excuses in sins; remember that Psalm: Do not incline my heart to words of malice, to excuse excuses in sins with men who work iniquity. But indeed they are malicious who defend their sins; malicious too are those who number the stars, and who reckon stars and times, and say who, and when, will either sin or live well; and when Mars makes a murderer and Venus an adulterer; they seem great learned and chosen men in the world.

[680C–680D]
"But what does the Psalm say? Do not incline my heart to words of malice with men who work iniquity, and I will not communicate with their chosen ones. Let them call the star-counters chosen and learned [n9]; let them call wise [those] who as it were reckon up human deeds on their fingers, and write about the stars as determining human character. As for me, since God created me with free choice, if I have sinned, I have sinned, so that I not only declare my iniquity to the Lord, but against myself, not against him. I said: Lord, have mercy on me; the sick man cries out to the physician. I said; why, I said? Would it not suffice? 'I' was said, 'I,' not fate, not fortune, not the devil, since not even he compelled, but I consented to the one who persuaded; I said: Lord, have mercy on me."

With these many Catholic Doctors agree in many places, briefly recalled in the twenty-eighth of the first. A third group also, who, given foreknowledge, predestination, reprobation, or divine providence, subject human acts to a violently compelling necessity, excuse man from sin and accuse God in his stead, as very many authorities cited more fully in the thirty-fourth of the first plainly attest.

[680D–680E]
To many, indeed, it seems that God's foreknowledge, etc., is repugnant to such freedom of choice and to merit. Hence Anselm too, On Harmony 5, says: "It is only for that choice, and for that freedom, without which a man cannot be saved once he is able to use them, that the question is debated. For many complain on this account, because they think that for salvation, or for damnation, free choice is worth nothing, but only necessity on account of God's foreknowledge." Likewise Augustine, On Free Choice 3, 2, putting this question under the name of a disciple, speaks thus: "It moves me beyond words how it can be that God is foreknowing of all future things, and that we sin by no necessity. For whoever says that anything can happen otherwise than God foreknew, labors in the maddest impiety to destroy God's foreknowledge. Wherefore, if he foreknew that the first man would sin, it was necessary that that should come to pass which God foreknew would be; how then is the will free, where so inevitable a necessity appears?" To this Augustine at once adds in reply: "You have knocked vehemently at the mercy of God; may he be present and open to those who knock! Yet I should believe that the greatest part of men are tormented by this question for no other reason than that they do not seek piously, and are quicker to excuse than to confess their sins. For some willingly hold that no divine providence presides over human affairs, and while they commit both souls and bodies to chance happenings, they hand themselves over to be beaten and torn to pieces by lusts, denying divine judgments, deceiving human ones; they think they can fend off those by whom they are accused with the patronage of fortune. Sometimes, however, though they dare not deny that God's providence presides over human life, they prefer, by a wicked error, to believe it weak or unjust or evil, rather than to confess their sins with suppliant piety."

[680E–681B]
And below, 3: "This disturbs you, and you wonder at this: how these are not contrary and conflicting, that God should be foreknowing of all future things, and that we should sin not by necessity but by will. For if God, you say, foreknows that a man will sin, it is necessary that he sin; but if it is necessary, then there is no choice of will in sinning, but rather an inevitable and fixed necessity. And by this reasoning, lest this be concluded, you fear that either God, as foreknowing all future things, be impiously denied, or, if we cannot deny this, we be compelled to confess that we sin not by will but by necessity." And further below, 4, under the name of a disciple it is written and asked in this way: "I do not yet see how these two are not opposed to each other: God's foreknowledge of our sins, and our free choice in sinning. For we must confess God to be both just and foreknowing; but I would like to know by what justice he punishes sins that must come to be; or how it is not necessary that those things come to be that he foreknew would be; or how it is not to be ascribed to the Creator, whatever necessarily comes to be in his creature." This question he pursues at length, objecting and replying, through many chapters in succession. The same, On True and False Penance 8: "There are those, he says, who defend guilt from God's providence, reckoning to God's ordination and necessity what has been left to will and to freedom of choice."

[681B–681C]
And in his Catholic refutation of the sixteen chapters falsely imputed to him by the Pelagians, the same Augustine recites their thirteenth objection in these words: "That all those faithful and holy ones who are predestined to eternal death, when they slide back to their vomit, seem to do this by their own fault also; but the cause of that fault itself is divine predestination, which secretly withdraws good wills from them." Many other objections of theirs recited there also put this forward. Therefore the Pelagians themselves either simply denied predestination, or conceded it only, and scarcely, in Christ's Apostles, as many books of Augustine show, but especially the book On the Good of Perseverance in many chapters toward the end; most especially, however, his book on predestination against the Pelagians, in which by canonical scripture, and likewise by reason, he shows that divine predestination must be conceded in general. That book of his ought to follow immediately his aforesaid work on the refutation of the sixteen chapters objected to him by the Pelagians; hence in its beginning he speaks thus: "It is above all necessary to add these things also to this work, now prefaced concerning these sixteen chapters, so that your slander, which you are wont to hurl at us, may be refuted through the illumination of the Savior's grace, indeed confuted, and the integrity of our faith be proved. You demand that we believe or preach, because with the law of God and the Prophets, with the Gospel of Christ and his Apostles we speak of predestination, that God so predestines certain men to the life of the kingdom of heaven that, if they are unwilling to pray, to fast, or to be watchful in every divine work, they cannot perish at all, nor ought they to be anxious about themselves, whom God, because he willed, once for all by choosing has predestined to life; but that he predestined certain others to the punishment of gehenna, so that even if they wished to believe, if they subjected themselves to fastings and prayers and wholly to the divine will, God would take no delight in them, and eternal life could not at all be given them."

[681C–681D]
And further on, in the same last chapter: "To deny predestination, therefore, which we have briefly proved exists with God, is a still greater blasphemy [n10], for we must understand it not only, as you are wont to say, in the Apostles, but also in the Patriarchs, Prophets, Martyrs, and Confessors, in all the saints and those who serve God worthily."

[681D–681E]
Moreover, since the understanding of what is said must be reasonably weighed from the cause of the saying, it must be very carefully considered, in the books of Authors refuting these errors, who is refuting whom, and where; and in accordance with this the understanding of all their sayings must be drawn out. For where, in contradicting the first of these errors, they say absolutely that human acts come about not from necessity but freely, this is to be understood of necessity of nature, and of the freedom opposed to it, as the adversary also understood it; otherwise there would be no true refutation (elenchus), nor true contradiction against him. For according to the Philosopher, Sophistical Refutations 1, where he treats of ignorance of refutation, a refutation is the contradiction of one and the same thing, not of a name only but of the thing and the name, in the same respect and in relation to the same. But where, in refuting the second, they say something of this sort, it is to be understood of the fatal necessity of the stars and the contrary freedom; and where, in reproving the third, they remove necessity, simply positing free power, it is to be understood of the necessity on the part of God foreknowing, or doing anything similar, compelling violently, excusing sin, and taking away merit; and correspondingly, on the contrary side, of free power.

[681E–682A]
Hence it must be known further that the first of these errors is destroyed by the Philosopher in general, Metaphysics 9, 10, and after, as the fourth of this cited more fully, and by many other Philosophers in many other places. Hence Ammonius, in the place above, recites an opinion saying that all things come about from necessity, and that this very thing comes about from necessity, that they say that all things are necessary, or that all things are in us; and he reproves it in this way [n11]: "If indeed the second is true, not all things are from necessity; but if the first, how will some hold the opposite opinion, that many things are in us? For if nature produces all things necessarily, as their statement posits, that we should be moved contrary to nature to pronounce against what is done by nature is altogether astonishing, and just like this: as if someone teaching the medical art by that very act instructed his pupils to destroy the principles of the art they had learned, although it is plausible that an artisan does something of the things outside the art, not insofar as he is such (say, a physician giving something harmful or poisonous), as having a soul self-moving, and art doing nothing; yet for nature to do something contrary to its own is impossible."

[682A–682B]
Boethius also, on the same passage, says that animal is threefold, namely subject to nature, subject to heaven, subject to reason and free choice of will; and, having explained the first two species, he adds about the third, that we are all subject to divine providence, and depend also on the very will of divine things. By this, then, he means that human beings are not subject to necessity of nature, as the other animals are subject. The same, in the Consolation of Philosophy, last prose, shows that not all things come from necessity of nature; the sequence of whose words is recited in the canon, 23, question 4. So, though Gratian attributes nothing of it to Boethius but all to Augustine [n12], Boethius could rightly complain against him, as Virgil did in a like case, saying:

I composed these verses; another bore off the honors:
So you, not for yourselves, make honey, bees;
so you, not for yourselves, hatch chicks, birds;
so you, not for yourselves, make fleeces, sheep.

[682B–682C]
Likewise Augustine, Questions on the Old and New Testament [n13], the first, says thus: "If man were not in his own power, he would have been subject to necessity, so that he would have neither glory for good work nor punishment for evil, but would have been one of the cattle." And in the second question: "If the devil were evil by nature, to promise him punishment would be the act either of a madman or of an unjust man: for who would reproach one whom he sees doing nothing otherwise than his nature permits? Or how can anyone be angry with fire because it burns, or with water because it chills, since it does this surely not by will but by nature?" And below: "If these are thought to act naturally, they cannot be held guilty, because they do what belongs to their nature and what they can, and do not do what they cannot, because it is not of their nature; and so they are neither to be praised nor condemned, because they do these things not by will but by the impulse of nature." This, in general, against this first error, which is also condemned similarly in very many other places and by many other Authors, and which the third of the second condemns accordingly and in concord [n14].

[682C–682D]
But it must still further be noted against this error, as far as the Manichaeans are concerned, that blessed Augustine wrote specially and principally many books against the Manichaeans themselves: namely the book On Free Choice, as is clear from Retractations 1, 9; and On the Good of Perseverance 27; and next the book On Genesis against the Manichaeans, as both the book itself and the tenth of the first Retractations show; the book On True Religion, as chapter 13 of that book and the first Retractations show; the books On the Two Souls against Fortunatus the Manichaean, Against Adimantus, a disciple of Mani, Against the Letter of the Foundation, Against Faustus the Manichaean, Against Felix the Manichaean, On the Nature of the Good, Against Secundinus, as the twenty-second of the first Retractations shows most clearly, with the second, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth of the second. Against him and them he likewise inveighs in many other books of his, though not so principally, but incidentally and partially, in many places.

[682D–682E]
This error also, as to its second part, Stephen, Bishop of Paris, condemned [n15] in these words: that free choice is a passive power, not an active one, and that it is moved of necessity by the desirable; and again in these: that the will of itself is undetermined to opposites, like matter, but is determined by the desirable, as matter by an agent. Many other articles, likewise condemned by the same Bishop, have a similar savor. The same error also, as to its third part, the same Bishop condemned in these words: that the will of man is necessitated by its cognition, like the appetite of a brute; and again in this form: that the will necessarily follows what is principally believed by reason, and cannot abstain from what reason dictates; but this necessity is not compulsion, but the nature of the will. The same work also condemned the same error, for its fourth and last part, and hence also for the second principal [error] [n16], on the necessity of the fate of the stars, in many articles, as the third of the second recited more fully. This Ammonius also, and Boethius on On Interpretation 1, last chapter, rightly condemn. It is condemned too by all the Philosophers, except a few astrologers, geomancers, necromancers, and other diviners, who in this respect are by no means to be called philosophers, but rather lovers of trifles [n17]; nor do all the astrologers concede this, but some confess directly the opposite, as the third of the second recited more fully.

[682E–683A]
Augustine also condemns this error with fervent zeal: City of God 5; the Eighty-Three Questions, 45; On Christian Doctrine 2; and next the Questions on the Old and New Testament 115; and in many other places. The whole throng of Catholic Doctors likewise reprobates and condemns it in various places, as the twenty-eighth of the first recited in some measure. The third error, moreover, Ammonius and Boethius reprove in the places given above.

[683A–683B]
This error too of the Pelagians, and the erring Pelagians themselves, Augustine and other Catholic Doctors reprove in many places, as the thirty-fourth of the first and what follows recite in some measure, and specially in the books written against the Pelagians: namely in the book On Predestination against the Pelagians mentioned above; in the book On the Predestination of the Saints, to Prosper and Hilary; in the little book On the Predestination and Grace of God, which in the first book of his Sermons is placed as the fifth sermon; the Hypognosticon; On Freedom of Choice, to Hilary; On Nature and Grace; On Rebuke and Grace; On Grace and Free Choice; On the Good of Perseverance; On the Deeds of Pelagius; On the Grace of Christ, and Original Sin, against Pelagius and Caelestius; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, in four books, to Boniface; Against Julian, Pelagius' disciple, in six books; On the Perfection of Human Justice, to Paul and Eutropius; Against Caelestius the Pelagian; On the Refutation of the Sixteen Chapters falsely imputed to Augustine by the Pelagians; and in his letters to Sixtus, priest of the Roman Church, to Valentine the monk, to Pope Innocent, and others.

[683B–683C]
In certain other books of his also, though he pursues another subject principally, he nonetheless sometimes incidentally refutes and rebuts the Pelagian heresy, as in On Free Choice 3, Retractations 1 and 2 in many chapters, On the Words of the Lord, On the Words of the Apostle, On John, and on the Psalter very frequently, and in many other books of his, not easily numbered by me. Anselm also wrote specially against this error a book on the harmony of foreknowledge, predestination, and grace with free choice. Likewise blessed Prosper, whose works are approved as authentic among those of the other Catholic Doctors in the canon, Distinction 15, last chapter, fruitfully refutes and demolishes the error of the Pelagians in his book entitled For the Preachers of the Grace of God, against the book of Cassian the priest, which is entitled On the Protection of God [n18]. Venerable Bede does the same likewise in his book against Julian, which is the first of his books on the Song of Songs. Blessed Gregory also, and other holy Fathers, do the same in many places [n19].

[683C]
It must therefore be diligently noted that Authors, where they refute this error and deny necessity of free choice, understand it of the necessity arising from divine foreknowledge, providence, or predestination that is adverse to freedom and violently compelling, excusing men in their sins and accusing God in everything; but spontaneous necessity they never deny, indeed they concede it. Hence Augustine, in On the Predestination against the Pelagians 9, says that he does not say, as the Pelagians supposed, that God hurls the non-predestined against their will to any work of death; very many authorities, cited in the thirty-fourth of the first and earlier in this same chapter, plainly attest this. There are also others besides these attesting the same. For Gratian, in the twenty-third question, 4, the canon Vasis [n20]

[683D–683E]
…of wrath, he cites Augustine as saying: "God would never render destruction to vessels of wrath, if man were not found to have sin spontaneously, since God does not justly bring wrath upon a man who sins, if the man had fallen into guilt by God's predestination." And at once he adds another authority of his, which says: "It is most absurdly said that God's predestination, whether toward good or toward evil, works in men, so that some necessity seems to impel men toward either." "Impel," he says, that is, violently, or at least in such a way that they do not do these things of themselves but are only moved by another. For impulsion and expulsion are species of pushing, which, as is clear from Physics 7, 10 [n21], is violent motion, or at least motion only from another, not from the thing pushed. And so the Authority, in order to remove violence and motion only from another, at once adds: "Since the will in good things is to be understood as not without grace, but in evil things the will is to be understood as without grace." And so Gratian concludes below: "Divine predestination or foreknowledge therefore does not impose a necessity of correction or of hardening, since the good are corrected through grace, and the evil perish by free choice."

[683E]
Likewise Augustine, in the sermon on predestination and the grace of God, 17: "If it is said," he says, "that Pharaoh could no longer be changed, because God had foreknown that he was not to be changed, the answer is that God's foreknowledge does not compel a man to be such as God foreknew him, but foreknows that he will be such as he is going to be, though God did not make him so; for if it compels him to be, it compels what is not. Moreover, if God had foreknown that what is not would be, it is not foreknowledge—and how impiously that is said of God! Anyone who does not flatter himself in his sins on the ground that God foreknew he would be a sinner takes note of this [n22]." The same writer says on the joys of the just and the punishments of the wicked, or on the threefold dwelling of God: "Foreknowledge compels no one to sin, as many in error say. For if, they say, God foreknew that Adam would sin, he could not fail to sin; from which error it follows that God is the cause of sin, which it is impious to say; yet even they are bound fast by their own words."

[683E–684B]
"For if what God's foreknowledge held must come to be, then man sinned by his own will and not by any necessity, because it was in God's foreknowledge that he would sin by will and free choice, and not by compelling necessity. If, therefore, God's foreknowledge cannot be avoided, man could not have sinned otherwise than by will, no other force compelling him, since God foreknew him thus as one who would sin. If, therefore, he was led to sin by will and not compelled, he could without doubt have not sinned, had he wished; hence he deserved punishment, because he did not sin unwillingly; otherwise he would not receive the punishment of death from God." And the same, in On Free Choice 3, 4, answering the disciple's question recited above, speaks thus: "Just as these two things do not oppose each other, that by your foreknowledge you know what another is going to do by his own will, so God, compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who will sin by their own will. Why then should the just one not judge, though foreknowing what he does not compel to happen? For just as by your memory you do not compel the things that have passed to have happened, so God by his foreknowledge does not compel the things that are to come to be done." Hence also proposition 381 of Prosper's Sentences is excerpted from this.

[684B–684D]
And above, in 3, he shows that this consequence is not valid: "God foreknows that man will sin; therefore man will sin not by will but by necessity"; because, if it were valid, then since God foreknows that he will do everything he will do, God himself would do all things not by will but by necessity. And below, in 5, he resolves the third question put forward above, showing that the sin of the creature is not to be imputed to the Creator by way of blame. Augustine therefore wills, in these and similar places, to deny of man an unwilling necessity that violently compels the will and takes away its free power; but not a spontaneous necessity. Hence above, in the same 3, he says to the disciple: "See how easily I answer so great a question. For surely this is what troubles you, and at this you wonder: how it is that these things are not contrary and opposed, that God should foreknow all future things, and that we should sin not by necessity but by will. For if God foreknows, you say, that a man will sin, it is necessary that he sin; but if it is necessary, then in sinning there is no choice of the will, but rather an unavoidable and fixed necessity."

And in answering he intimates that the argument is at fault in form in two ways [n23]. First, because this first consequence is not valid: "God foreknows that man will sin; therefore man will sin by necessity, not by will." Second, because this second consequence does not hold: "It is necessary that man sin; therefore in sinning there is no choice of the will, but rather an unchangeable and fixed necessity." Throughout that whole chapter he accordingly tries, by many reasons, to show that this consequence is not valid: "This will be or come about of necessity; therefore not by free will." And he shows that the opposite of the consequent and the antecedent, namely free will and necessity, do not conflict; and this is the substance of that whole chapter of the third book. The first argument by which he shows that necessity arising from God's foreknowledge is in no way unwilling, nor takes away free will, is this: "God foreknows that he will make you blessed by his own will, and this will of God is a necessity for you; therefore you will be blessed against your will." Augustine says this to the disciple, as if saying, "That by no means follows," which the disciple too confesses: "For if," he says, "I had the power to be blessed, I would surely be so already: for I will it even now, and I am not."

[684D–684E]
He confirms this argument by hinting at the distinction of necessity set out earlier, when he says: "We can rightly say: we grow old not by will but by necessity; or, we fall ill not by will but by necessity; or, we die not by will but by necessity; or anything else of the kind. But that we will not by will—who would dare say it, even in delirium?" By this he evidently indicates that the human will, which according to him (Enchiridion 86) of necessity wills blessedness in the present state, or at least will necessarily will it in the future state, does not will it, or will it, by natural or unwilling necessity, of the kind that is the necessity of growing old, falling ill and dying, but by spontaneous necessity. Hence he adds: "Therefore, although God foreknows our future wills, it does not follow from this that we do not will something by will; for I say of blessedness: when you are going to be blessed, you will be so not unwilling but willing." His other argument is this: necessity descending from God's foreknowledge does not remove the will but rather confirms it. For if, because God foreknows that I will will freely, it follows necessarily that I will freely, then I will will freely, neither unwilling nor compelled. Hence he says: "Consider, I ask, with what blindness it is said: If God foreknew my future will, since nothing can happen otherwise than he foreknew, I must indeed will what he foreknew; but if it is necessary, then it must be confessed that I will that not by will but by necessity. O singular folly! How then can something other than God foreknew come to be, if the will will not exist, which will he foreknew would be? For since he foreknows our will, that will, which he foreknows, will exist; the will therefore will exist, because he foreknows will. By his foreknowledge, then, the power is not taken from me; it will be all the more certainly present to me for this reason, that he, whose foreknowledge does not fail, foreknew that it would be at hand for me."

[684E–685A]
"Behold, I do not now deny that whatever God foreknew must come to be, and that he thus foreknows our sins, in such a way that the will nevertheless remains free for us, and placed in our power." What could be said more clearly, more plainly? Behold, he does not deny necessity, so long as the will remains. Hence below, in 11, he concludes thus: "Since these things are so, it is so far from the truth that the sins of the creature are to be thought imputable to the Creator, although they come about by necessity, since he himself foreknew them as future, that when you say you cannot find how whatever must come to be in his creature is not imputed to him, I on the contrary would not find a way, nor can one be found, and I affirm that there is none at all, by which whatever in his creature must come to be in such a way that it happens by the will of those who sin should be imputed to him."

[685A–685B]
Following him, Anselm, in On Concord 1, hinting at the distinction of necessity set out above, shows that the necessity that follows God's foreknowledge does not conflict with free will; and this by a twofold argument. The first is taken, as it were, from the obligatory art [n24], and goes thus: "If such necessity and freedom conflict, it is impossible for them to stand together; therefore, if it is posited that they stand together, something impossible will follow; but with this posited, no impossible follows." His second argument, similar to Augustine's argument set out above, is this: "If foreknown things are necessarily future, then as they are foreknown to be future, so they are future; but many things are foreknown to be future without necessity, that is, without unwilling and compelling necessity, because by free will; therefore so they will be."

[685B–685C]
He pursues these arguments at length, together with the sense of the distinction set out above, in these words: "God's foreknowledge and free choice indeed seem to conflict, since what God foreknows must be future, and what comes about through free choice proceeds from no necessity. But [if] they conflict [n25], it is impossible for there to be at once God's foreknowledge, which foresees all things, and something happening through freedom of choice; and if this impossibility is understood to be absent, the conflict which seems to be present is all but removed. Let us therefore posit that there are at once both God's foreknowledge, which the necessity of future things seems to follow, and freedom of choice, through which many things are believed to happen without any necessity; and let us see whether it is impossible for these two to be at once. For if it is impossible, another impossible arises from it; for that is impossible, from the positing of which another impossible follows.

[685C–685D]
"But if something is future without necessity, God, who foreknows all future things, can foreknow this very thing; and what God foreknows is future just as it is foreknown [n26]; therefore it is necessary that something be future without necessity, or be foreknown without truth. To one who rightly understands the term, therefore, foreknowledge, which this necessity follows, and freedom of choice, from which necessity is removed, do not seem to conflict at all, since both it is necessary that what God foreknows be future, and God foreknows that something will be future without any necessity. But you will say to me: 'You do not, however, remove from me the necessity of sinning or of not sinning, since God foreknows that I will sin or not sin, and so it is necessary that I sin if I sin, or not sin if I do not sin.' To which I reply: you should not say 'God foreknows that I will sin' merely, or 'not sin,' but 'God foreknows that I will sin without any necessity,' or 'not sin'; and thus it follows that whether you sin or do not sin, both will be without necessity, since God foreknows that this which will be will be without necessity. You see, therefore, that it is not impossible that there should be at once God's foreknowledge, through which the future things he foreknows are said to be of necessity, and freedom of choice, through which many things come about without necessity. For if it were impossible, another impossible would follow; but no impossibility arises from this.

[685D–685E]
"Perhaps you say: 'You do not yet take from my heart the force of necessity when you say that it is necessary that I will sin or will not sin without any necessity, because God foreknows this: for necessity seems to sound of compulsion or prohibition. Hence, if it is necessary that I sin by will, I understand that I am compelled by some hidden force to the will of sinning, and, if I do not sin, that I am prevented from the will of sinning; therefore I seem to myself to sin by necessity if I sin, or not to sin by necessity if I do not sin.' And I answer: It must be known that we often say that is necessary to be which no force compels to be, and that is necessary not to be which no prohibition removes. For example, we say that God must be immortal, and God must not be unjust, not because some force compels him to be immortal or prevents him from being unjust, but because nothing can make him not immortal or make him unjust; so indeed, in this sense I say it is necessary that you will sin or not sin by will alone; so God foreknows it. It is not to be understood that anything prohibits the will which will not be, or compels the will which will be: for God, who foresees something future from will alone, foreknows this very thing, that the will is compelled or prohibited by no other thing; and so what comes about from will comes about from freedom."

[685E–686A]
He also, below, in the same work, 7, follows the same course, harmonizing predestination with free choice, where he says thus: "God neither foreknows nor predestines anyone to be just from necessity. For he does not have justice who does not keep it by free will. Likewise, therefore, although what is foreknown and what is predestined must come to be, yet the foreknown and predestined things do not come about by the necessity that precedes the thing and makes it, but by that which already follows it, as we said above. For God, though he predestines them, does not bring them about by compelling the will, or by resisting the will, but by leaving it in its own power; yet although the will uses its own power, it does nothing that God does not do, in the good by his grace, in the evil not by his, but by the fault of that same will." It is clear, therefore, that he does not deny of man's free choice a spontaneous necessity, but an unwilling and violently compelling one, which accuses God of fault and excuses man; this the authorities of his own, set out above in the demonstration of the first corollary of this book, also plainly attest. To me, then, reading the books of the Authors, and reading them again and again, and in no way, I think, carelessly, it appears consistently that they wish to deny of the free choice of the will only a necessity adverse to freedom, or destructive of freedom, namely natural, fatal and violent necessity, because the error was only about these. For many writers of falsehoods and heretics have subjected man's will to one or another of these necessities, but to the other, none [n27]; yet spontaneous necessity, consonant with freedom, I do not think any of the Authors wishes to deny of the free choice of the will.

[686A–686C]
COROLLARY.

Corollary: that necessity and freedom and merit do not conflict with one another, or do conflict [n28].

From these things I take it to be manifest that [n29] necessity and freedom and merit do not conflict with one another, or do conflict. For spontaneous necessity in no way conflicts with freedom, as what has been set out here, and in the first and second of this book, shows; therefore neither will it conflict with merit. This spontaneous necessity, however, is further twofold, namely preceding and following, as can be had from the second of this; just as freedom also is twofold: one wholly simple and utterly absolute, the other said in a certain respect, as 5 and 9 of this show. Of these necessities, neither conflicts with freedom of contradiction said in a certain respect, nor does the following conflict with freedom of contradiction simply, as can be had from the second, fifth and ninth of this; but the preceding necessity does conflict with freedom of contradiction simply. Natural, fatal and violent necessity also conflict in every way with freedom of contradiction, as is clear from what is set out here and from the third of the second; therefore neither can they stand with merit.

NOTES

1. "The thirteenth of the first," "the seventh part of that thirteenth," "the second of this," "the twenty-eighth of the first," "the third of the second" and similar back-references are Bradwardine's own, to numbered divisions of Books 1, 2 and 3. They are kept as written and not expanded here (Conventions §5.4).
2. De fide ad Petrum is by Fulgentius of Ruspe, transmitted in the Middle Ages among Augustine's works. Savile and Bradwardine take it as Augustine's.
3. Savile gives the canon (Gratian, Decretum, C. 23 q. 4) only by its opening word.
4. Mathematici here are astrologers, not mathematicians; compare the list "astrologers, geomancers, necromancers, and other diviners" at 682E.
5. "De bono perseuerantiae" is the title as printed throughout (679C, 681B, 682C, 683A). The work meant is Augustine's De dono perseverantiae. Translated as printed.
6. This is not Jerome's. The passage is from Pelagius's profession of faith (Libellus fidei), which circulated under Jerome's name as a letter to Damasus. Bradwardine, as the quotation's use shows, takes it as Jerome's orthodox statement.
7. De vera et falsa poenitentia is pseudo-Augustinian, a medieval work, not Augustine's. Bradwardine cites it as his.
8. "Erineus" is the printed reading; Savile's margin offers Armenus. The commentator is Ammonius, son of Hermias, so "Erineus" is perhaps a corruption of Hermeus. I keep the printed form untranslated.
9. The italic electos et doctos has a variant margin electi et docti. The main reading construes as an ironic concession: "let them call the star-counters 'chosen and learned,' let them call 'wise' [those] who…". Savile's bracketed [eos] supports this. I follow the main text.
10. quam non tantum … debemus accipere is construed with quam as the relative pronoun, its antecedent praedestinationem. The words in maius blasphemia est are taken as "is a blasphemy tending to greater (is still greater)." A comparative quam ("a greater blasphemy than…") finds no second term, so I rejected it.
11. The opinion is compressed. I take "the second" to be "all things are in us" and "the first" to be "all things are necessary" (hence "from necessity"). So Ammonius's dilemma runs: if the second is true, not all things are from necessity; if the first, no one could hold the opposite opinion, that many things are in us. The Latin does not say this in so many words.
12. Non ergo does not construe smoothly with what follows: Non ergo, quamvis Gratianus … tribuat …, ut sic … valeat conqueri. I give the evident sense (Boethius may rightly complain of Gratian's misattribution). Possibly Nonne ergo is meant, a rhetorical question to the same effect.
13. The Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti are not Augustine's. They are the work now called Ambrosiaster's (pseudo-Augustine).
14. secundum et concorditer tertium secundi condemnat: I take secundum as "accordingly" (adverbial) and tertium secundi as the third of the second [book], the same reference as at 679A and 682E. The syntax is loose.
15. Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, whose condemnation of 219 propositions (1277) is meant. "The same work" below is that collection of articles.
16. quare et secundum [errorem] principalem: "quare" is taken as "and therefore," the fourth part of the error of natural necessity being the same as the second principal error, that of fatal necessity (the stars).
17. philosophi / friuophili: Savile's friuophili (probably for frivolophili) plays on philosophi. English cannot keep both words, so it has "lovers of trifles."
18. The work is Prosper's Contra collatorem (against John Cassian's Conference 13, De protectione Dei). Savile's title is the one Bradwardine gives.
19. In the print the margin has two separate entries, Beda. and Gregorius., plus a variant \ Aug.nus.* at the asterisk before Gregorius. The keyed Latin merged the first two into one entry at 683C·1. I kept the markers as keyed.
20. The unit ends here, with only the first word of the canon (Vasis irae, "vessels of wrath") given. The sentence continues in the next unit.
21. "Phys. 7, 10": the doctrine that pushing (impulsio) and expulsion are species of pushing (pulsio), moved by an external mover, is that of Physics VII (the passage on pushing and pulling). I have not identified what Savile's "10" counts (a comment or text number in the medieval Aristotle with commentary); his numbering is kept as written.
22. aduertit quilibet qui … non inde blanditur, quod …: the verb is indicative in the print; the sense wants "let anyone … take note" (aduertat) or "everyone … notices". I took the indicative as printed and supplied "of this" to complete it. The sentence is hard, and I have not emended.
23. argumentum peccare in forma dupliciter: the argument is faulty in logical form (peccare in forma, "to sin in form") in two ways, that is, it contains two invalid consequences. The English "at fault in form" loses the verb peccare that plays against the theme of the chapter.
24. ars obligatoria: the medieval disputation art of obligationes, in which a proposition is posited and one must grant whatever follows from it. Anselm's argument is a reductio: posit that both stand together and see whether an impossibility follows.
25. The print reads Sed repugnant; where the sense wants "But if they conflict" (Sed si repugnant). I supplied "[if]" in brackets and kept the semicolon of the print.
26. The keyed Latin has quod autem praescit Deus necessitate futurum est sicut praescitur, "what God foreknows is future by necessity just as it is foreknown." As I read the page, the print has no necessitate here, and with it the sentence would contradict its own conclusion (necesse est igitur aliquid esse futurum sine necessitate). I translated the print and logged the difference in the Errata.
27. alteri autem nullus: elliptical. I take it that many subjected the will to one or another of the natural, fatal and violent necessities, but no one subjected it to the other kind, the spontaneous; the next clause says exactly that no Author denies spontaneous necessity.
28. The title is disjunctive (non repugnant … vel repugnant) because the answer depends on the kind of necessity, as the body of the corollary shows: spontaneous necessity does not conflict with freedom or merit; preceding, natural, fatal and violent necessity do.
29. The text reads quae necessitas et libertas … non repugnant, which does not construe; the sense requires quod ("that"). I translated "that" and did not emend.