De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 38
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, 769A–769B; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/38/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[769A–769B]
CHAPTER XXXVIII. He argues against the fifth.

The fifth response holds that the liberty of a created will can be, or was, the cause of such a past or present effect. It seems to speak very freely,[n1] without any exercise of reason, for it neither clears away the difficulty nor is it true. It does not clear away the difficulty set out above. Suppose, for example, that one who sees in the Word[n2] is commanded to will and to act only in conformity with the vision, etc., as the thirty-third and the thirty-fifth of this[n3] argued more fully. Then the difficulty returns. Nor is that response true, since some effects are caused solely by the vision of certain objects in the Word, without any free operation of the will whatsoever, as the thirty-third of this makes plain.

NOTES

1. libere dicere: "to speak freely" plays on libertas voluntatis, the liberty of the will, which the fifth response asserts. The English keeps the adverb and loses the echo of liberum arbitrium.
2. videnti in verbo: "one who sees in the Word" is one who sees things in the divine Word. The blessed, or one granted revelation, see what is to come there. The argument of the preceding chapters concerns a seer of future contingents.
3. huius: "of this" is left as Bradwardine wrote it, in the manner of a cross-reference, with capitulum understood. It refers to chapters 33 and 35 of this book, Book III.