Chapter 2: Of Predestination, Grace, Free-will, Faith, Works, Justification and Sanctification
Of Predestination, Grace, Free-will, Faith, Works, Justification and Sanctification.
The doctrine which our learned men observed out of the Scriptures and the writings of the most approved Fathers, was this: that God by his immovable counsel (as Gallus speaks in his Sermon preached at Constance) ordained some of his creatures to praise him, and to live blessedly from him and in him, and by him: namely, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none. That he has mercy with great goodness, and hardens without any iniquity: so as neither he that is delivered can glory of his own merits, nor he that is condemned complain but of his own merits. For as much as grace only makes the distinction between the redeemed and the lost; who by a cause drawn from their common original, were framed together into one mass of perdition. For all mankind stood condemned in the apostolical root (of Adam) with so just and divine a judgement; that although none should be freed from there, no man could rightly blame the justice of God: and such as were freed, must so have been freed, that by those many which were not freed, but left in their most just condemnation, it might be showed what the whole lump had deserved, that the due judgement of God should have condemned even those that are justified, unless mercy had relieved them from that which was due: that so all the mouths of them, which would glory of their merits, might be stopped; and he that glorifies, might glory in the Lord.
They further taught (as Saint Augustine did) that man using ill his free will, lost both himself and it. That, as one by living is able to kill himself, but by killing himself is not able to live, nor has power to raise up himself when he has killed himself, so when sin had been committed by free will, sin being the conqueror, free will also was lost; for as much as of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought in bondage (2 Peter 2:19). That to a man thus brought in bondage and sold, there is no liberty left to do well, unless he redeem him, whose saying is this: "If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). That the mind of men from their very youth is set upon evil: there being not a man which sins not. That a man has nothing from himself, but sin. That God is the author of all good things, that is to say, both of good nature, and of good will; which unless God does work in him, man cannot do. Because this good will is prepared by the Lord in man; that by the gift of God he may do that, which of himself he could not do by his own free will. That the good will of man goes before many gifts of God, but not all: and of those which it does not go before, it itself is one. For both of these is read in the holy Scriptures: "His mercy shall go before me," and, "His mercy shall follow me": it prevents him that is unwilling that he may will, and it follows him that is willing, that he will not in vain. And that therefore we are admonished to ask that we may receive, to the end, that what we do will may be effected by him, by whom it was effected that we did so will.
They taught also, that the Law was not given, that it might take away sin, but that it might shut up all under sin: to the end that men, being by this means humbled, might understand that their salvation was not in their own hand, but in the hand of a Mediator. That by the Law comes, neither the remission nor the removal, but the knowledge of sins: that it takes not away diseases, but discovers them; forgives not sins, but condemns them. That the Lord God did impose it, not upon those that served righteousness, but sin; namely, by giving a just law to unjust men, to manifest their sins, and not to take them away: for as much as nothing takes away sins but the grace of faith which works by love. That our sins are freely forgiven us; without the merit of our works: that through grace we are saved, by faith, and not by works; and that therefore we are to rejoice, not in our own righteousness, or learning, but in the faith of the Cross, by which all our sins are forgiven us. That grace is abject and vain, if it alone does not suffice us: and that we esteem basely of Christ, when we think that he is not sufficient for us to salvation.
That God has so ordered it, that he will be gracious to mankind, if they do believe that they shall be freed by the blood of Christ. That, as the soul is the life of the body, so faith is the life of the soul: and that we live by faith only, as owing nothing to the Law. That he who believes in Christ, has the perfection of the Law. For whereas none might be justified by the Law, because none did fulfill the Law, but only he which did trust in the promise of Christ: faith was appointed, which should be accepted for the perfection of the Law, that in all things which were omitted faith might satisfy for the whole Law. That this righteousness therefore is not ours, nor in us, but in Christ; in whom we are considered as members in the head. That faith, procuring the remission of sins by grace, makes all believers the children of Abraham: and that it was just, that as Abraham was justified by faith only, so also the rest that followed his faith should be saved after the same manner. That through adoption we are made the sons of God, by believing in the Son of God: and that this is a testimony of our adoption, that we have the Spirit; by which we pray, and cry Abba Father; for as much as none can receive so great a pledge as this, but such as be sons only. That Moses himself made a distinction between both the justices, to wit of faith and of deeds: that the one did by works justify him that came, the other by believing only. That the Patriarchs and the Prophets were not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith. That the custom of sin has so prevailed, that none now can fulfill the Law: as the Apostle Peter says (Acts 15:10), "Which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear." But if there were any righteous men which did escape the curse: it was not by the works of the Law, but for their faith's sake that they were saved.
Thus did Sedulius and Claudius, two of our most famous divines deliver the doctrine of free will and grace, faith and works, the Law and the Gospel, justification and adoption; no less agreeably to the faith which is at this day professed in the reformed Churches, than to that which they themselves received from the more ancient doctors, whom they did follow therein. Neither do we in our judgment one whit differ from them, when they teach that faith alone is not sufficient to life. For when it is said, that faith alone justifies: this word alone may be conceived to have relation either to the former part of the sentence, which in the schools they term the subject; or to the latter, which they call the predicate. Being referred to the former, the meaning will be; that such a faith as is alone (that is to say, not accompanied with other virtues) does justify: and in this sense we utterly disclaim the assertion. But being referred to the latter, it makes this sense; that faith is it which alone or only justifies: and in this meaning only do we defend that proposition; understanding still by faith, not a dead carcass thereof (for how should the just be able to live by a dead faith?) but a true and lively faith, which works by love. For as it is a certain truth, that among all the members of the body, the eye is the only instrument whereby we see; and yet it is as true also, that the eye being alone, and separated from the rest of the members, is dead, and for that cause does neither see only, nor see at all: so these two sayings likewise may stand well enough together, that among all the virtues in the soul, faith is the only instrument whereby we lay hold upon Christ for our justification; and yet, that faith being alone, and disjoined from the society of other graces, is dead in itself, (as Saint James speaks) and in that respect can neither only justify, nor justify at all.
So though Claudius does teach as we do, that faith alone saves us; because by the works of the law no man shall be justified: yet he adds withal this caution. Not as if the works of the law should be contemned, and without them a simple faith (so he calls that solitary faith whereof we spoke, which is a simple faith indeed) should be desired; but that the works themselves should be adorned with the faith of Christ. For that sentence of the wise man is excellent, that the faithful man does not live by righteousness, but the righteous man by faith. In like manner Sedulius acknowledges with us, that God has purposed by faith only to forgive our sins freely, and by faith only to save the believers; and that, when men have fallen, they are to be renewed only by the faith of Christ, which works by love. Intimating by this last clause, that however faith only be it which justifies the man, yet the work of love is necessarily required (for all that) to justify the faith. And this faith (says he) when it has been justified, sticks in the soil of the soul, like a root which has received a shower: that when it has begun to be manured by the law of God, it may rise up again into boughs, which may bear the fruit of works. Therefore the root of righteousness does not grow out of works, but the fruit of works out of the root of righteousness; namely out of that root of righteousness, which God does accept for righteousness without works. The conclusion is: that saving faith is always a fruitful faith; and though it never go alone, yet may there be some gift of God, which it alone is able to reach to. As Columbanus also implies in that verse: *Sola fides fidei dono ditabitur almo.*
The greatest depressers of God's grace, and the advancers of man's abilities, were Pelagius and Celestius, the one born in Britain (as appears by Prosper Aquitanus) the other in Scotland or Ireland; as Mr. Persons does gather out of those words of Saint Hierom in one of the prefaces of his commentaries (not upon Ezechiel, as he quotes it, but) upon Jeremy. He has his offspring from the Scottish nation, near to the Britons. These heretics (as our Marianus notes out of Prosper in his Chronicle) preached, among other of their impieties, that for attaining of righteousness every one was governed by his own will, and received so much grace as he did merit. Whose venomous doctrine was in Britain repressed, first by Palladius, Lupus, Germanus and Severus from abroad; afterward, by David Menevensis, and his successors at home agreeably to whose institution, Asser Menevensis does profess, that God is always to be esteemed both the mover of the will, and the bestower of the good that is willed. For he is (says he) the instigator of all good wills, and withal the most bountiful provider that the good things desired may be had: forasmuch as he would never stir up any to will well, unless he did also liberally supply that which every one does well and justly desire to obtain.
Among our Irish, the grounds of sound doctrine in these points were at the beginning well settled by Palladius and Patricius, sent here by Celestinus Bishop of Rome. And when the poison of the Pelagian heresy, about two hundred years after that, began to break out among them: the clergy of Rome in the year of our Lord 639 (during the vacancy of the See, upon the death of Severinus) directed their letters to them, for the preventing of this growing mischief. Wherein among other things they put them in mind, that it is both blasphemy and folly to say, that a man is without sin: which none at all can say, but that one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who was conceived and born without sin. Which is agreeable, partly to that of Claudius; that it is manifest to all wise men, although it be contradicted by heretics, that there is none who can live upon earth without the touch of some sin: partly to that of Sedulius, that there is none of the elect so great, whom the Devil does not dare to accuse, but him alone who did no sin, and who said; The Prince of this world comes now, and in me he finds nothing.
For touching the imperfection of our sanctification in this life, these men held the same that we do: to wit, that the Law cannot be fulfilled; that there is none that does good, that is to say, perfect and entire good. That God's elect shall be perfectly holy and immaculate in the life to come, where the Church of Christ shall have no spot nor wrinkle: whereas in this present life they are righteous, holy, and immaculate, not wholly, but in part only. That the righteous shall then be without all kind of sin, when there shall be no law in their members, that shall resist the law of their mind. That although sin does not now reign in their mortal body to obey the desires thereof: yet sin dwells in that mortal body, the force of that natural custom being not yet extinguished, which we have gotten by our original, and increased by our actual transgressions. And as for the matter of merit: Sedulius does resolve us out of Saint Paul, that we are Saints by the calling of God, not by the merit of our deed; that God is able to exceeding abundantly above that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, not according to our merits; that whatever men have from God is grace, because they have nothing of due; and that nothing can be found worthy or to be compared with the glory to come.
