Chapter 5. A Refutation of the Objections That Are Commonly Brought in Defense of Free Will

It might seem that we have said enough already concerning the bondage of man's will, if they that with false opinion of liberty, labor to throw it down headlong, did not on the contrary part pretend certain reasons to assail our meaning. First they heap up together diverse absurdities, whereby they may bring it in hatred as a thing abhorring from common reason; afterward they set upon it with testimonies of Scripture. Both these engines we shall beat back in order. If (say they) sin be of necessity, then it ceases to be sin; if it be voluntary, then may it be avoided. These were also the weapons of Pelagius to assail Augustine, with whose name we will not yet have them oppressed, till we have satisfied them concerning the matter itself. I deny therefore that sin ought the less to be imputed, because it is necessary. I deny again that this does follow which they conclude, that it may be avoided, because it is voluntary. For if any man will dispute with God, and seek to escape from his judgment by this pretense, because he could none otherwise do: God has that answer ready which we in another place have spoken of, that it is not of creation, but of the corruption of nature that men being made bondslaves to sin, can will nothing but evil. For from where comes this want of power which the wicked would gladly pretend, but upon this, that Adam of his own accord made himself subject to the tyranny of the Devil? Hereupon therefore grew the corruption, with the bonds whereof we are held fast tied, for that the first man fell from his creator. If all men be justly held guilty of this falling away, let them not think themselves excused by necessity, in which itself they have a most evident cause of their damnation. And this I have above plainly set forth, and I have given an example in the Devil himself, whereby it might appear, that he which necessarily sins, does nevertheless willingly sin: as again in the elect angels, whereas their will cannot be declined from good, yet it ceases not to be a will. Which same thing Bernard also aptly teaches: that we are therefore the more miserable, because our necessity is voluntary; which yet holds us so subject to it, that we be the bondslaves of sin, as we have before rehearsed. The second part of their argument is faulty, because from voluntary it straightway leaps to free; but we have before proved, that it is voluntarily done which yet is not subject to free election.

They further say: that if both virtues and vices proceed not of free choice of will, it is not reasonable that either punishment should be laid upon man or reward given to him. This argument, although it be Aristotle's, yet I grant is in some places used by Chrysostom and Jerome. But that it was a common argument with the Pelagians, Jerome himself hides not, and also rehearses it in their own words. If the grace of God work in us: then it, not we that labor, shall be crowned. Of punishments I answer, that they are justly laid upon us from whom the guiltiness of sin proceeds. For what matter makes it, whether sin be done by free or bond judgment, so it be done by voluntary lust: especially since man is hereby proved a sinner, for that he is under the bondage of sin. As to the rewards of righteousness: a great absurdity forsooth it is, if we confess that they hang rather upon God's bountifulness, than upon our own deservings. How often find we this thing repeated in Augustine: that God crowns not our deservings, but his own gifts; and that they are called rewards, not as due to our deservings, but such as are rendered to the graces already bestowed upon us? Wisely indeed they note this, that now there remains no place for deservings, if they come not out of the fountain of free will; but where they reckon that which we say so far differing from truth, they are much deceived. For Augustine doubts not, commonly to teach for necessary, that which they think so unlawful to confess, as where he says: What are the merits of any men whatever they be? When he comes, not with due reward, but with free grace, then he alone being free, and that makes free from sin? He finds all men sinners. Again, if that shall be rendered to you that is due to you; you are to be punished: what is done then? God has not given you punishment which is due, but gives you grace which is not due. If you will be estranged from grace, boast of your deservings. Again: you are nothing by yourself. Sins are yours, but deservings are God's, punishment is due to you; and when reward comes, he shall crown his own gifts, and not your deservings. And in the same meaning in another place, he teaches that grace is not of deserving, but deserving of grace. And a little after he concludes, that God with his gifts goes before all deservings, that out of the same he may gather his own deservings, and does give all together freely, because he finds nothing whereupon to save. But what need is it to make a longer register, when such sentences are often found in his writings? But the Apostle shall yet better deliver them from this error, if they hear from what beginning he conveys the glory of the saints: Whom he has chosen, them he has called; whom he has called, them he has justified; whom he has justified, them he has glorified. Why then, as witnesses the Apostle, are the faithful crowned? Because by the Lord's mercy and not by their own endeavor they are both chosen and called and justified. Away therefore with this vain fear, that there shall no more be any deservings, if free will shall not stand. For it is most foolish to be frightened away and to flee from that to which the Scripture calls us. If (says he) you have received all things, why do you glory, as if you had not received them? You see that for the same cause he takes all things from free will, to leave no place for deservings; but as the bountifulness and liberality of God is manifold, and impossible to be spent out, those graces which he bestows on us, because he makes them ours, he rewards as if they were our own virtues.

Moreover they bring forth that which may seem to be taken out of Chrysostom: If this is not the power of our will, to choose good or evil, then they that are partakers of the same nature, must either all be evil or all be good. And not far from that is he, whoever he was, that wrote the book Of the Calling of the Gentiles, which is carried about under the name of Ambrose, when he makes this argument, that no man should ever depart from the faith, unless the grace of God did leave to us the state of mutability: wherein it is a marvel, that such excellent men fell beside themselves. For how does it happen that it came not into Chrysostom's mind, that it is God's election that so makes difference between men? As for us, we do not fear to grant that which Paul with great earnestness affirms, that all together are perverse and given to wickedness: but with him we adjoin this, that by God's mercy it comes to pass that all do not abide in perverseness. Therefore whereas naturally we are all sick of one disease, they only recover health upon whom it has pleased God to lay his healing hand. The rest whom by just judgment he passes over, pine away in their own rottenness until they are consumed. Neither is it of any other cause, that some continue to the end, and some fall in their course begun. For continuance itself is the gift of God, which he gives not to all indifferently, but deals it to whom it pleases himself. If a man ask for a cause of the difference, why some continue constantly, and some fail by unsteadfastness, we know no other cause but that God sustains the one sort, strengthened with his power that they perish not, and does not give the same strength to the other sort, that they may be examples of inconstancy.

Further they press us, saying, that exhortations are vainly taken in hand, that the use of admonitions is superfluous, that it is a foolish thing to rebuke, if it is not in the power of the sinner to obey. When the like things in time past were objected against Augustine, he was compelled to write the book of Corruption and Grace: where although he largely [reconstructed: sweeps] them away, yet he brings his adversaries to this sum: O man, in the commandment learn what you ought to do: in correction learn that by your own fault you do not have it: in prayer learn from where you may receive that which you would have. Of the same argument in a manner is the book of the Spirit and Letter, where he teaches that God measures not the commandments of his law by the strength of man, but when he has commanded that which is right, he freely gives to his elect power to fulfill it. And this is no matter of long disputation. First we are not only in this cause, but also Christ and all the Apostles. Now let the other look how they will get the mastery in striving, that match themselves with such adversaries. Does Christ, which testifies that we can do nothing without him, any the less rebuke and chastise them, that without him did evil? Does he less exhort every man to apply himself to good works? How severely does Paul inveigh against the Corinthians for neglecting of charity? And yet he prays for charity to be given to the same men from God. He testifies in the Epistle to the Romans, that it is neither of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that has mercy, and yet he ceases not afterward to admonish, to exhort and to rebuke. Why do they not therefore speak to the Lord, that he do not so lose his labor in requiring of men those things which he himself alone can give, and in punishing those things which are done for want of his grace? Why do they not admonish Paul to spare them, in whose power it is not to will or to run, but in the mercy of God, going before them which now has forsaken them? As if the Lord had not a very good reason of his doctrine, which offers itself readily to be found of them that reverently seek it, but how much doctrine, exhortation and rebuking do work of themselves, to the changing of the mind, Paul declares, when he writes, that neither he that plants is anything, nor he that waters, but the Lord that gives the increase only effectually works. So we see that Moses severely establishes the commandments of the law, and the Prophets do sharply call upon them, and threaten the transgressors, whereas they yet confess, that men do then only grow wise, when a heart is given them to understand, that it is the proper work of God to circumcise the hearts, and in stead of stony hearts to give hearts of flesh, to write his law in the bowels of men: finally in renewing of souls to make that his doctrine may be effectual.

Therefore, what do exhortations serve? For this purpose: if they be despised by the wicked with an obstinate heart, they shall be for a witness to them when they shall come to the judgment seat of the Lord, indeed, and even now already they beat and strike their conscience: for however the most perverse man laughs them to scorn, yet can he not disprove them: but you will say, what may silly miserable men do, if the softness of heart, which was necessarily required to obedience, be denied him? In fact, why does he excuse himself, when he can impute the hardness of heart to none but to himself? Therefore the wicked that are willingly ready to mock them out if they might, are thrown down with the force of them whether they will or no. But the chief profit toward the faithful is to be considered: in whom as the Lord works all things by his Spirit, so he leaves not the instruments of his word, and uses the same not without effect. Let this therefore stand which is true, that all the strength of the godly rests in the grace of God, according to that saying of the prophet: I will give them a new heart that they may walk in them (Ezekiel 11:19). But you will say: Why are they now admonished of their duty, and not rather left to the direction of the Holy Ghost? Why are they moved with exhortation, since they can make no more haste than the stirring forward of the Holy Ghost works? Why are they chastised if at any time they be gone out of the way, since they fell by the necessary weakness of the flesh? O man, what are you to appoint a law for God? If it be his pleasure, that we be prepared by exhortation to receive the self-same grace, whereby is wrought that the exhortation is obeyed, what have you in this order to bite or carp at? If exhortations and rebukings did nothing else profit with the godly, but to reprove them of sin, they were even for that thing only to be counted not altogether unprofitable. Now, for as much as by the Holy Ghost working inwardly, they much avail to inflame the desire of goodness, to shake off sluggishness, to take away the pleasure and venomous sweetness of wickedness, and on the other side to engender a hatred and irksomeness thereof: who dare cavil that they are superfluous? If any man require a plainer answer, let him take this: God works after two sorts in his elect, inwardly by his Spirit, outwardly by his word: By his Spirit, by enlightening their minds, by framing their hearts to the love and keeping of justice, he makes them a new creature: By his word, he stirs them to desire, to seek and attain the same renewing: by them both he shows forth the effectual working of his hand, according to the proportion of his distribution. When he sends the same word to the reprobate, though not for their amendment, yet he makes it to serve for another use: that both for the present time they may be pressed with witness of conscience, and may against the day of judgment be made more inexcusable. So though Christ pronounces that no man comes to him, but whom the Father draws, and that the elect do come when they have heard and learned of the Father (John 6:44): yet does he not neglect the office of a teacher, but with his voice diligently calls them, whom it necessarily behooves to be inwardly taught by the Holy Ghost, that they may profit at all. And Paul teaches, that teaching is not in vain with the reprobate, because it is to them the savor of death to death, but a sweet savor to God (2 Corinthians 2:16).

They be very laborious in heaping together of testimonies of Scripture: and that they do of purpose, that when they cannot oppress us with weight, they may yet with number. But as in battles, when it comes to hand strokes, the weaker multitude however much pomp and show it has, is with a few stripes discomfited and put to flight: so shall it be very easy for us to overthrow them with all their rout. For, because the places that they abuse against us, when they are once divided into their orders, do meet upon a few special points, we shall with one answer satisfy many of them: therefore it shall not be needful to linger upon dissolving every one of them particularly. Their chief force they set in the commandments, which they think to be so tempered to our strengths, that whatever is proved to be required by the one, it necessarily follows that it may be performed by the other. And therefore they run through every one of the commandments, and by them do measure the proportion of our strength. For (say they) either God mocks us when he charges us with holiness, godliness, obedience, chastity, love, and meekness: and when he forbids us uncleanness, idolatry, unchasteness, wrath, robbery, pride, and such like: or he requires only those things that are in our power. Now, we may divide into three sorts in manner all the commandments that they heap together. Some require our first conversion to God, some speak simply of the keeping of the law: some command us to continue in the grace of God that we have received. First let us speak of them all in generality, and then descend to the special sorts. To extend the power of man to the commandments of the law, has indeed long ago begun to be common, and has some show: but it proceeded from most rude ignorance of the law. For they that think it a heinous offense, if it be said that the keeping of the law is impossible, do rest indeed upon this most strong argument, that else the law was given in vain. For they speak in such sort as if Paul had nowhere spoken of the law. For, I beseech them, what mean these sayings, that the law was set because of transgressions: That by the law is the knowledge of sin: That the law makes sin: that the law entered, that sin might abound (Galatians 3:10; Romans 3:20; Romans 7:7): was it meant that the law was to be limited to our strengths, lest it should be given in vain? Or rather that it was set far above us to convince our weakness? Truly by the same man's definition, the end and fulfilling of the law is charity (1 Timothy 1:5). But when he wishes the minds of the Thessalonians to be filled with charity, he does sufficiently confess, that the law sounds in our ears without profit, unless God inspire the whole sum thereof in our hearts (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

Truly, if the Scripture did teach nothing else, but that the law is a rule of life to which we ought to frame our endeavors, I would also without delay agree to their opinion: but whereas it does diligently and plainly declare to us the manifold use of the law, it is fitting rather to consider by that interpretation, what the law may do in man. For as much as concerns this present cause: it teaches that as soon as it has appointed what we ought to do, the power to obey comes of the goodness of God, and therefore moves us to prayer, whereby we may require to have it given us. If there were only the commandment and no promise, then were our strength to be tried whether it were sufficient to answer the commandment, but since there are promises joined withal, which cry out, that not only our aid, but also all our whole power consists in the help of God's grace, they do testify enough and more, that we are altogether unfit, much more insufficient to keep the law. Therefore let this proportion of our strengths with the commandments of God's law be no more enforced, as if the Lord had measured the rule of justice, which he purposed to give in his law, according to the rate of our weakness. Rather by his promises we ought to consider, how unready we are of ourselves which in every respect do so much need his grace. But who (say they) shall be persuaded that it is likely to be true, that the Lord appointed his law to stocks and stones? Neither does any man go about to persuade it. For the wicked are neither stocks nor stones, when being taught by the law that their lusts do strive against God, they are proved guilty by their own witness. Nor yet the godly, when being put in mind of their weakness, they flee to grace. For which purpose serve these sayings of Augustine. The Lord commands those things that we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask of him. Great is the profit of the commandments, if so much be given to free will, that the grace of God be the more honored. Faith obtains that which the law commands, indeed the law therefore commands, that faith may obtain that which was commanded by the law: indeed God requires faith itself of us, and finds not what to require, unless he give what to find. Again, Let God give what he commands, and command what he will.

That shall more plainly be seen in rehearsing the three sorts of commandments which we touched before. The Lord oftentimes commands both in the law and in the Prophets, that we be converted to him. But on the other side, the Prophet answers, Convert me, Lord, and I shall be converted: for after that you did convert me, I repented, etc. He commands us to circumcise the uncircumcised skin of our heart: and by Moses he declares that this circumcision is done by his own hand. He everywhere requires newness of heart, but in another place he testifies that it is given by himself. That which God promises (says Augustine) we do not by free will or nature, but he himself does it by grace. And this is the same note that he himself rehearses in the fifth place among the rules of Ticonius, that we well make difference between the law and the promises, or between the commandments and grace. Now let them go, that gather by the commandments whether man be able to do anything toward obedience in such sort that they destroy the grace of God, by which the commandments themselves are fulfilled. The commandments of the second sort are simple, by which we are bidden to honor God, to serve and cleave to his will, to keep his commandments, to follow his doctrine. But there are innumerable places that do testify that it is his gift whatever righteousness, holiness, godliness or purity may be had. Of the third sort was that exhortation of Paul and Barnabas to the faithful, which is rehearsed by Luke, that they should abide in the grace of God. But from where that strength of constancy is to be had, the same Paul teaches in another place. That remains, says he, brethren, be strong through the Lord. In another place he forbids us, that we do not grieve the Spirit of God, with which we are sealed up to the day of our redemption. But because the thing that he there requires could not be performed by men, therefore he wishes it, to the Thessalonians, from God, namely, that he would reckon them worthy of his holy calling, and fulfill all the purpose of his goodness, and the work of faith in them. Likewise in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, treating of alms, he oftentimes commands their good and godly will: yet a little after, he thanks God that put it in the heart of Titus, to take upon him to give exhortation. If Titus could not so much as use the office of his mouth to exhort others, but only so far as God did put it to him, how should others have been willing to do, unless God himself had directed their hearts?

The craftier sort of them do cavil at all these testimonies: because there is no impediment, but that we may join our own strengths, and God to help our weak endeavors. They bring also places out of the Prophets, where the effect of our conversion seems to be parted in half between God and us. Turn to me, and I will turn to you. What manner of help the Lord brings us, we have above showed, and it is not needful here to repeat it. This one thing I would have granted me, that it is vainly gathered that there is required in us a power to fulfill the law, because God does command the obedience of it: for as much as it is evident, that for the fulfilling of all the commandments of God, the grace of the lawgiver is both necessary for us and promised to us. Thereby then it appears, that at least there is more required of us than we are able to pay. And that saying of Jeremiah cannot be wiped away with any cavillings: that the covenant of God made with the ancient people, was void, because it was only literal, and that it could no otherwise be established, than when the spirit comes to it, which frames the hearts to obedience. Neither does that saying, Turn to me, and I will turn to you, favor their error. For there is meant, not that turning of God, whereby he renews our hearts to repentance, but whereby he by prosperity of things does declare himself favorable and merciful: as by adversity he sometime shows his displeasure. Whereas therefore the people being vexed with many sorts of miseries and calamities, did complain that God was turned away from them: he answers, that they shall not be destitute of his favor, if they return to uprightness of life, and to himself that is the pattern of righteousness. Therefore the place is wrongfully wrested, when it is drawn to this purpose, that the work of our conversion should seem to be parted between God and men. These things we have comprehended so much the more shortly, because the proper place for this matter shall be where we treat of the Law.

The second sort of their arguments is much like the first. They allege the promises whereby God does covenant with our will, of which sort are, Seek good and not evil, and you shall live. If you will and do hear, you shall eat the good things of the earth: but if you will not, the sword shall devour you, because the Lord's mouth has spoken it. Again, If you put away your abominations out of my sight, then you shall not be driven out: If you shall obey diligently the voice of the Lord your God, and observe and do all his commandments which I command you this day, then the Lord your God will set you on high above all the nations of the earth. And other like. They do inconveniently and as it were in mockery think, that these benefits which the Lord does offer in his promises, are assigned to our own will: unless it were in us to establish them or make them void. And right easy it is to amplify this matter with eloquent complaints, that the Lord does cruelly mock us, when he pronounces that his favor hangs upon our will, if the same will be not in our power: and that this liberality of God should be a goodly thing indeed, if he so sets his benefits before us that we have no power to use them: and a marvelous assurance of his promises, which hang upon a thing impossible, so as they might never be fulfilled. But of such promises as have a condition adjoined, we will speak in another place: so that it shall be plain, that there is no absurdity in the impossible fulfilling of them. And for so much as concerns this place: I deny that God does unkindly mock us, when he moves us to deserve his benefits, whom he knows to be utterly unable to do it. For whereas the promises are offered both to the faithful and to the wicked, they have their use with both sorts. As God with his commandments pricks the conscience of the wicked, that they should not so sweetly take pleasure in their sins, without any remembrance of his judgments: so in his promises he does in a manner take them to witness, how unworthy they are of his goodness. For who can deny that it is most rightful and convenient, that the Lord do good to them of whom he is honored, and punish the despisers of his majesty, according to his severity? Therefore God does well and orderly, when in his promises he adjoins this condition to the wicked that are bound with the fetters of sin, that they shall then only enjoy his benefits, if they depart from their wickedness: or for this purpose only, that they may understand that they are worthily excluded from these things, that are due to the true worshippers of God. Again, because he seeks by all means to stir up the faithful to call upon his grace, it shall not be inconvenient, if he attempt the same thing also by promises, which we have showed that he has done to great profit with commandments toward them. Being informed of the will of God, by his commandments, we are put in mind of our misery, which do with all our heart so far dissent from the same, and we are therewith pricked forward to call upon his spirit, whereby we may be directed into the right way. But because our sluggishness is not sufficiently sharpened with commandments, there are added promises which with a certain sweetness may allure us to the love of them. And that the more desire that we have of righteousness, we may be the more fervent to seek the favor of God. Lo, how in these requests, (If you will: If you shall hear,) the Lord neither gives us power to will nor to hear, and yet mocks us not for our want of power.

The third sort of their arguments has also great affinity with the two former. For they bring forth the places wherein God reproaches the unthankful people, and says that they themselves only were the cause that they received not of his tender love all kinds of good things. Of which sort are these places: Amalek and the Canaanite are before you, with whose sword you shall fall, because you would not obey the Lord; because I called and you answered not, I will do to this house as I did to Shiloh. Again, this nation has not heard the voice of the Lord their God, nor has received discipline, therefore it is cast away from the Lord. Again, because you have hardened your heart and would not obey the Lord, all these evils are happened to you. How (say they) could such reproaches be laid against them which might readily answer? As for us, we loved prosperity, and feared adversity. But whereas, for to obtain the one and avoid the other, we obeyed not the Lord, nor hearkened to his voice: this was the cause thereof, for that it was not at our liberty so to do, because we were subject to the dominion of sin. Vainly therefore are these evils laid to our charge, which it was not in our power to avoid. But leaving the pretense of necessity, wherein they have but a weak and sickly defense, I ask of them whether they can purge themselves of all fault. For if they be found guilty of any fault, then the Lord does not without cause reproach them, that it came to pass by their perverseness, that they felt not the fruit of his clemency. Let them answer therefore, whether they can deny, that their froward will was the cause of their stubbornness. If they find the spring-head of the evil within themselves, why do they gape to find out foreign causes, that they might seem not to have been authors of their own destruction? But if it be true that by their own fault and none others, sinners are both deprived of the benefits of God, and chastised with punishments, then is there great reason why they should hear these reproaches at the mouth of God: that if they go obstinately forward in their faults, they may learn in their miseries rather to accuse and abhor their own wickedness, than to blame God of unjust cruelty: that if they have not cast off all willingness to learn, they may be weary of their sins, by the deservings whereof they see themselves miserable and undone, and may return into the way, and acknowledge the same with earnest confession which the Lord rehearses in chiding them. For which purpose it appears by the solemn prayer of Daniel, which is in the ninth chapter, that those chidings of the Prophets which are alleged, did avail with the godly. Of the first use we see an example in the Jews, to whom Jeremiah is commanded to declare the cause of their miseries, whereas yet it should not have fallen otherwise than the Lord had foretold. You shall speak to them all these words, and they shall not hear you: you shall call them, and they shall not answer you. To what end then did they sing to deaf men? That being even loath and unwilling, yet they should understand that it was true that they heard, that it were wicked sacrilege if they should lay upon God the blame of their evils which rested in themselves. By these few solutions you may easily deliver yourself from the infinite heap of testimonies, which, for to erect an image of free will, the enemies of the grace of God are accustomed to gather together, as well out of the commandments as out of the protestations against the professors of the law. It is reproachfully spoken, in the Psalm concerning the Jews: A froward generation that have not made their heart straight. Also in another Psalm, the Prophet exhorts the men of his age, not to harden their hearts, and that because all the fault of obstinacy remains in the perverseness of men. But it is fondly gathered thereof, that the heart is pliable to either side, the preparing whereof is only of God. The Prophet says: I have inclined my heart to keep your commandments: because he had willingly and with a cheerful earnest affection of mind devoted himself to God, and yet he does not boast himself to be the author of his own inclination, which he confesses in the same Psalm to be the gift of God. Therefore we must hold in mind the admonition of Paul, where he urges the faithful to work their own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is the Lord that works both the willing and the performing. Indeed he assigns them duties, to be doing, that they should not give themselves to sluggishness of the flesh: but in that he commands them to have fear and carefulness, he so humbles them, that they may remember that the same thing which they are commanded to do, is the proper work of God, wherein he plainly expresses, that the faithful work, passively, as I may so call it, in so much as power is ministered them from heaven, that they should claim nothing at all to themselves. Therefore when Peter exhorts us that we should add power in faith, he grants not to us a second duty, as if we should do anything severally by ourselves, but only he awakens the slothfulness of the flesh, whereby commonly faith itself is choked. To the same purpose seems that saying of Paul: Extinguish not the Spirit. For slothfulness does oftentimes creep upon the faithful, if it be not corrected. But if any man conclude thereupon, that it is in their own choice to cherish the light being offered them, his ignorance shall be easily confuted: because the self-same diligence that Paul requires, comes only from God. For we are also oftentimes commanded to purge ourselves from all filthiness: whereas the Holy Spirit claims to himself alone the office of making holy. Finally that by way of granting the same thing, is conveyed to us that properly belongs to God, is plain by the words of John: Whoever is of God, saves himself. The advancers of free will take hold of this saying, as if we were saved partly by the power of God, partly by our own: as though we had not from heaven the very same safekeeping, whereof the Apostle makes mention. For which cause, Christ also prays his Father to save us from evil, and we know that the godly, while they war against Satan, get the victory by no other army and weapons, but by the armor and weapons of God. Therefore when Peter commanded us, to purify our souls in the obedience of truth, he by and by added as by way of correction, (by the Holy Spirit.) Finally, how all man's strengths are of no force in the spiritual battle, John briefly shows, when he says, that they which are begotten of God, cannot sin, because the seed of God abides in them. And in another place, he renders a reason why: for that our faith is the victory that overcomes the world.

Yet there is alleged a testimony out of the law of Moses, which seems to be much against our salvation. For after the publishing of the law, he protests to the people in this manner: The commandment that I command you this day, is not hidden from you, neither far off: It is not in heaven, but near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart, you should do it (Deuteronomy 30:11).

Truly if this be taken to be spoken of the bare commandments, I grant they be of no small weight to this present matter. For though it were easy to mock it out with saying, that here is spoken not of the easiness and readiness of observation, but of knowledge: yet even so, perhaps it would also leave some doubt. But the Apostle, who is no doubtful expositor, takes away all doubt from us, who affirms that Moses here spoke of the doctrine of the Gospel. But if any obstinate man will say, that Paul violently wrested those words, that they might be drawn to the Gospel: although his boldness so to say shall not be without impiety, yet is there sufficient matter beside the authority of the Apostle to convince him withal. For if Moses spoke of the commandments only, then he puffed up the people with a most vain confidence. For what should they else have done, but thrown themselves down headlong, if they had taken upon them the keeping of the law by their own strength, as a thing not too hard for them? Where is then that so ready easiness to keep the law, where there is no access to it, but by a headlong fall to destruction? Therefore there is nothing more certain, than that Moses in these words did mean the covenant of mercy, which he had published together with the strict requiring of the law. For in a few verses before he had taught, that our hearts must be circumcised by the hand of God, that we may love him. Therefore he placed the easiness, of which he immediately after speaks, not in the strength of man, but in the help and support of the Holy Spirit, which performs his work mightily in our weakness. Albeit the place is not simply to be understood of the commandments, but rather of the promises of the Gospel, which are so far from establishing a power in us to obtain righteousness, that they utterly overthrow it. Paul, considering that same, proves by this testimony (Romans 10:8) that salvation is offered us in the Gospel, not under that hard and impossible condition, with which the law deals with us, that is, that they only shall attain it who have fulfilled all the commandments, but under a condition that is easy, ready, and plain to come to. Therefore this testimony makes nothing to challenge freedom to the will of man (Deuteronomy 30:8).

There are also certain other places wont to be objected, whereby is shown that God sometimes, withdrawing the support of his grace, tries men, and waits to see to what end they will apply their endeavors, as is that place in Hosea: I will go to my place till they put it in their heart and seek my face. It were a foolish thing (say they) if the Lord should consider whether Israel would seek his face, unless their minds were [reconstructed: pliable] that they might after their own will incline themselves to the one side or the other. As though this were not a thing commonly used with God in the Prophets, to make a show as if he did despise and cast away his people, till they have amended their life. But what will the adversaries gather out of such threatenings? If they mean to gather, that the people being forsaken of God, may purpose their own salvation: all the Scripture shall cry out against them in so doing. If they confess that the grace of God is necessary to conversion, why [reconstructed: strive] they with us? But they so grant it necessary, that still they will have man's power preserved to him. How prove they that? Truly not by this place, nor any like to it. For it is one thing, to depart aside from man, and to look what he will do being given over and left to himself, and another thing to help his little strength after the measure of his weakness. What then (will some man say) do these manners of speaking mean? I answer that they are as much in effect, as if God had said: For as much as I prevail nothing with this stubborn people by admonishing, exhorting and rebuking, I will withdraw myself a while: and sit still and suffer them to be afflicted: I will see if at length, after long miseries, they will begin to remember me, to seek my face. The Lord's going far away, signifies the taking away of prophecy: his looking what men will do, signifies that he, keeping silence, and as it were hiding himself, does for a time exercise them with diverse afflictions. Both these things he does to humble us the more. For we should sooner be dulled than amended, with the scourges of adversity, unless he did frame us to that tractableness by his Spirit. Now whereas the Lord, being offended, and in a manner wearied with our obstinate stubbornness, does not for a time leave us (that is by taking away his word in which he is wont to give us a certain presence of himself) and does make a proof what we would do in his absence, it is falsely gathered hereof that there is any strength of free will that he should behold and try, for as much as he does it to no other end, but to drive us to acknowledge our own being nothing (Hosea 5:14).

They bring also for their defense the continual manner of speaking, that is used both in the Scriptures and in the talk of men. For good works are called ours, and it is no less said that we do the thing that is holy and pleasing to God, than that we commit sins. But if sins be justly imputed to us, as proceeding from us, truly in righteous doings also somewhat by the same reason ought to be assigned to us. For it were against reason that it should be said that we do those things, to the doing of which being unable of our own motion, we are moved by God like stones. Therefore though we give the chief part to the grace of God, yet these manners of speaking do show that our endeavor has also yet a second part. If that thing only were still enforced, that good works are called ours, I would object again, that the bread is called ours, which we pray to have given us of God. What will they get by the title of possession, but that by the bountifulness and free gift of God, the same thing becomes ours, which otherwise is not due to us? Therefore either let them laugh at the same absurdity in the Lord's prayer, or let them not reckon this to be laughed at, that good works are called ours, in which we have no property, but by the liberality of God. But this is somewhat stronger, that the Scripture oftentimes affirms that we ourselves do worship God, obey the law, and apply good works. Since these are the duties properly belonging to the mind and will: how could it agree that these things are both referred to the Holy Spirit, and also attributed to us, unless there were a certain communicating of our endeavor with the power of God? Out of these snares we shall easily unwind ourselves, if we well consider the manner how the Spirit of the Lord works in the holy ones. The similitude with which they enviously press us is from the purpose, for who is so fond to think that the moving of man differs nothing from the casting of a stone? Neither does any such thing follow of our doctrine. We reckon among the natural powers of man, to allow and refuse, to will and not will, to endeavor and to resist, that is, to allow vanity and to refuse perfect goodness, to will evil and to be unwilling to good, to endeavor ourselves to wickedness and to resist righteousness. What does the Lord herein? If it be his will to use that perverseness as an instrument of his wrath, he directs and appoints it to what end he will, that he by an evil hand may execute his good work. Shall we then compare a wicked man that so serves the power of God, when he labors only to obey his own lust, to a stone that being thrown by the violence of another, is carried neither with moving nor sense nor will of his own? We see how much difference there is. But what does he in good things, of which is our principal question? When he erects his kingdom in them, he by his Spirit restrains man's will, that it be not carried up and down with wandering lusts, according to the inclination of nature: and that it may be bent to holiness and righteousness, he bows, frames, fashions and directs it to the rule of his righteousness: and that it should not stumble or fall, he does establish and confirm it with the strength of his Spirit. For which reason Augustine says: You will say to me: then we are wrought, and work not. Indeed you both work and are wrought, and you work well when you are wrought of that which is good. The Spirit of God that works you, helps them that work, and gives himself the name of a helper, for that you also work somewhat. In the first part he teaches, that man's working is not taken away by the moving of the Holy Spirit, because will is of nature, which is ruled to aspire to goodness. But where he by and by adds, that by the name of help, may be gathered that we also do work somewhat, we ought not so to take it, as if he did give anything severally to us: but because he would not cherish slothfulness in us, he so matches the working of God with ours, that to will may be of nature, and to will well of grace. Therefore he said a little before, Unless God help us, we shall not be able to overcome, no nor yet to fight at all.

Hereby appears that the grace of God (as the word is taken when we speak of regeneration) is the rule of the spirit, to direct and govern the will of man. And it cannot govern it, unless it correct it, reform it, and renew it (from where we say that the beginning of regeneration is, that what is ours might be destroyed) and unless it move it, stir it, drive it forward, carry it and hold it. Therefore we do truly say that all the doings that proceed from it are wholly the only work of the same grace. In the meantime we deny not that it is very true what Augustine teaches, that will is not destroyed by grace, but rather repaired. For both these things do stand very well together: that men's will be said to be restored, when the faultiness and perverseness thereof being reformed, it is directed to the true rule of justice: and also that a new will be said to be created in man, inasmuch as it is so defiled and corrupted, that it needs utterly to put on a new nature. Now is there no cause to the contrary, but that we may well be said to do the same thing that the Spirit of God does in us, although our own will does of itself give us toward it nothing at all, that may be severed from his grace. And therefore we must keep that in mind, which we have elsewhere alleged out of Augustine, that some do in vain labor to find in the will of man some good thing that is properly her own. For whatever mixture men study to bring from the strength of free will to the grace of God, it is nothing but a corrupting of it, as if a man would dilute wine with dirty and bitter water. But although whatever good is in the will of man, it proceeds from the mere instinct of the Holy Spirit, yet because it is naturally planted in us to will, it is not without cause said, that we do those things of which God challenges the praise to himself. First, because it is ours whatever by his goodness he works in us, so that we understand it to be not of ourselves: and then because the mind is ours, the will is ours, the endeavor is ours, which are by him directed to good.

Those other testimonies beside these, that they scrape together here and there, shall not much trouble even those of modest understanding who have well conceived only the solutions above said. They allege that saying out of Genesis, "Your appetite shall be under you, and you shall bear rule over it." Which they expound of sin, as if the Lord did promise to Cain, that the force of sin should not get the upper hand in his mind, if he would labor in subduing of it. But we say that it better agrees with the order of the text, that this be taken to be spoken of Abel. For there God's purpose was to reprove the wickedness of the envy that Cain had conceived against his brother. And that he does two ways. One, that in vain he imagined mischief to excel his brother in God's sight, before whom no honor is given but to righteousness: the other, that he was too much unthankful for the benefit of God which he had already received, which could not abide his brother, although he had him subject under his authority. But lest we should seem therefore to embrace this exposition, because the other is against us: let us admit that God spoke of sin. If it be so, then God either promises or commands that which he there declares. If he commands, then have we already shown that thereby follows no proof of the power of man. If he promises, where is the fulfilling of the promise? For Cain became subject to sin, over which he should have had dominion. They will say, that in the promise was included a secret condition, as if it had been said, that he should have the victory if he would strive for it. But who will receive these crooked compasses? For if this dominion be meant of sin, then no man can doubt that it is spoken by way of commandment, wherein is not determined what we are able to do, but what we ought to do, yes though it be above our power. Albeit both the matter itself and the order of grammar do require, that there be a comparison made of Cain and Abel, because the elder brother should not have been set behind the younger, unless he had become worse by his own wicked doing.

They use also the testimony of the Apostle, which says that it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that has mercy. By which they gather that there is somewhat in man's will and endeavor, which of itself, though it be weak, being helped by the mercy of God, is not without prosperous success. But if they did soberly weigh what matter Paul there treats of, they would not so unadvisedly abuse this sentence. I know that they may bring forth Origen and Jerome for maintainers of their exposition — and I could on the other side set Augustine against them. But what they have thought makes no matter to us, if we know what Paul meant. There he teaches that salvation is prepared only for them to whom the Lord vouchsafes to grant his mercy, and that ruin and destruction is prepared for all those that he has not chosen. He had under the example of Pharaoh declared the state of the reprobate, and had also confirmed the assurance of free election by the testimony of Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Now he concludes that it is not of him that wills, or him that runs, but of God that has mercy. If it be thus understood, that will or endeavor are not sufficient because they are too weak for so great a weight, that which Paul says had not been aptly spoken. Therefore away with these subtleties — to say: It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, therefore there is some will, there is some running. For Paul's meaning is more simply thus: It is not will, it is not running that get us the way to salvation — herein is only the mercy of God. For he speaks no otherwise in this place than he does to Titus, where he writes that the goodness and kindness of God appears not by the works of righteousness which we have done, but for his infinite mercy. They themselves that make this argument — that Paul meant that there is some will and some running, because he said it is not of him that wills nor of him that runs — would not give me leave to reason after the same fashion, that we have done some good works, because Paul says that we have not attained the goodness of God by the good works that we have done. If they see a fault in this argument, let them open their eyes, and they shall perceive that their own is not without the like deceit. For that is a sure reason that Augustine rests upon: If it were therefore said that it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, because neither the will nor the running is sufficient, then it may be turned on the contrary part that it is not of the mercy of God, because it alone works not. Since this second is an absurdity, Augustine does rightly conclude that this is spoken to this meaning: that there is no good will of man unless it be prepared of the Lord — not but that we ought both to will and to run, but because God works both in us. No less inaptly do some wrest that saying of Paul: We are the workers with God, which without doubt ought to be restrained only to the ministers; and that they are called workers with him, not that they bring anything of themselves, but because God uses their service, after that he has made them fit and furnished with necessary gifts.

They bring forth Ecclesiasticus, who, as it is not unknown, is a writer of whose authority is doubted. But although we refuse it not (which yet we may lawfully do) what does he testify for free will? He says that man as soon as he was created was left in the hand of his own counsel; that commandments were given him, which if he observed, he should again be preserved by them; that before man was set life and death, good and evil; that whatever he would should be given him. Be it that man received from his creation power to obtain either life or death. What if on the other side we answer that he lost it? Truly my mind is not to speak against Solomon, which affirms that man at the beginning was created upright, and he forged to himself many inventions. But because man in straying lost, as it were by shipwreck, both himself and all his good things, it follows not straightaway that all that is given to his first creation belongs to his nature being corrupted and degenerate. Therefore I answer, not to them only, but also to Ecclesiasticus himself whatever he be: If you mean to instruct man to seek within himself power to attain salvation, your authority is not of so great force with us that it may be any prejudice, be it never so small, against the undoubted word of God. But if you only study to restrain the malice of the flesh, which in laying the blame of her own evils upon God uses to seek a vain defense for itself, and therefore you answer that uprightness was given to men, whereby it may appear that he himself was cause of his own destruction — I willingly agree to it; so that again you agree in this with me, that now by his own fault he is spoiled of those ornaments with which God had clothed him at the beginning; and that so we confess together that now he more needs a physician than a defender.

Yet they have nothing more often in their mouth than the parable of Christ of the wayfaring man, whom thieves laid abroad half dead in the way. I know that it is common almost with all writers, that the calamity of mankind is represented under the figure of that wayfaring man. Thereupon do our adversaries gather an argument, that man is not so maimed with the robbery of sin and the Devil, but that he keeps still remaining the leavings of his former good things, for as much as it is said, that he was left half alive. For where is that half life, unless some portion both of right reason and will remained? First if I would not give place to their allegory, I beseech you, what would they do? For there is no doubt that it was devised by the fathers beside the natural sense of the Lord's words. Allegories ought to go no further than they have the rule of Scripture going before them: so far is it off, that they be by themselves sufficient to ground any doctrines. And there lack not reasons, whereby I can, if I like, overthrow this device, for the word of God leaves not to man half a life, but teaches that he is utterly dead, for so much as concerns blessed life. And Paul when he speaks of our redemption, does not say that we were healed, when we were half dead and half alive, but that we were raised up again when we were dead. He calls not upon them that are half alive to receive the light of Christ, but them that sleep and are buried. And in like manner speaks the Lord himself, when he says, that the hour is come when the dead shall rise again at his voice. With what face would they set this light allusion against so many plain sentences? But let this allegory have the force of a certain testimony, yet what shall they wring out of us thereby? Man is half alive, therefore he has somewhat left safe. I grant: he has a wit capable of understanding, although it pierces not to the heavenly and spiritual wisdom: he has true judgment of honesty: he has some feeling of the godhead, although he does not attain the true knowledge of God. But to what purpose come all these things? Truly they bring not to pass that the same saying of Augustine be taken from us, which is also approved by common consent of the Schools: that after man's fall the freely given good things, on which salvation depends, are taken away from him, and that his natural gifts are corrupted and defiled. Let therefore this truth remain with us undoubted, which can be shaken by no engines, that the mind of man is so estranged from the righteousness of God, that it conceives, covets, and undertakes all wickedness, filthiness, uncleanness, and mischief: that his heart is so thoroughly soaked in poison of sin, that it can breathe out nothing but corrupt stink: But if at any time they do utter any goodness in show, yet still the mind remains always wrapped in hypocrisy and deceitful crookedness, and the heart entangled with inward perverseness.

It might seem that enough has been said about the bondage of human will — except that those who hold a false opinion of liberty are determined to tear it down, and they bring forward certain arguments to attack our position. First they pile up various absurdities to make it appear offensive to common sense, and then they assault it with Scripture passages. We will refute both lines of attack in turn. They argue: if sin is of necessity, then it is no longer sin; but if it is voluntary, then it can be avoided. These were the weapons Pelagius used against Augustine, whose name we will not yet invoke to silence them — we will first address the substance of their argument. I deny, therefore, that sin is any less blameworthy because it is necessary. I also deny that the conclusion they draw follows: that because sin is voluntary it can therefore be avoided. If anyone wants to argue with God and escape His judgment on the grounds that he could not have done otherwise, God has a ready answer — which I have addressed elsewhere — that it is not from creation but from the corruption of nature that people, having been made slaves to sin, can will nothing but evil. Where does this incapacity come from, which the wicked so eagerly invoke, except from the fact that Adam voluntarily made himself subject to the devil's tyranny? The corruption, with the chains of which we are bound, arose from the first man's fall from his Creator. If all people are justly held guilty in that fall, let them not think they can excuse themselves by pointing to the necessity — for in that very necessity lies the plainest cause of their condemnation. I have explained this above, and I have used the example of the devil himself to show that one who sins necessarily still sins willingly. Likewise, among the holy angels, whose wills cannot be turned from good, those wills do not cease to be wills. Bernard too teaches this aptly: that we are all the more wretched because our necessity is voluntary — yet it holds us so completely in its grip that we are slaves to sin, as we have already described. The second part of their argument is also flawed, because it leaps too quickly from 'voluntary' to 'free' — but we have already proved that something can be done voluntarily without being subject to free choice.

They further argue: if virtues and vices do not proceed from free choice of will, it is not reasonable that people should be punished for the one or rewarded for the other. This argument, though it originates with Aristotle, is used in some places by Chrysostom and Jerome. But that it was a common Pelagian argument, Jerome himself does not hide — he even rehearses it in their own words: 'If God's grace works in us, then grace, not we who labor, shall be crowned.' On the matter of punishment, I answer that it is justly imposed on those from whom the guilt of sin proceeds. What difference does it make whether sin is committed by a free or a bound judgment, as long as it is committed by a willing desire? Especially since the person is shown to be a sinner precisely because he is under sin's bondage. As for rewards for righteousness — it is apparently a great absurdity that they depend more on God's generosity than on our own merit. How often do we find this repeated in Augustine: that God crowns not our merits but His own gifts, and that these are called rewards not because we deserved them but because they are given in response to the graces He had already bestowed? The objectors wisely observe that if rewards do not flow from the fountain of free will, there is no room left for merit — but they are greatly mistaken in thinking this differs so far from the truth. Augustine does not hesitate to teach as necessary what they consider so scandalous to confess. He asks: 'What are the merits of any person whatever, when He comes not with due payment but with free grace — He who alone is free, and who sets free from sin?' 'He finds all people to be sinners.' And again: 'If what is due to you were to be paid out, you would be punished. What happens instead? God has not given you the punishment you deserved, but gives you grace you did not deserve. If you want to have nothing to do with grace, boast of your own merits.' And again: 'By yourself you are nothing. Sins are yours, but merits are God's. Punishment is what is owed to you, and when reward comes, He will crown His own gifts, not your merits.' In the same vein he teaches elsewhere that grace is not from merit but merit is from grace. A little later he concludes that God goes before all human merit with His gifts so that out of those very gifts He may gather His own deserving — and He gives everything freely, because He finds nothing in us on which to base salvation. But why make a longer list when such statements appear throughout his writings? The apostle will deliver them from this error still more directly, if they will hear from what source he traces the glory of the saints: 'Those He foreknew He predestined; those He predestined He called; those He called He justified; those He justified He glorified.' Why then, as the apostle testifies, are the faithful crowned? Because by the Lord's mercy — not by their own effort — they were chosen, called, and justified. Away therefore with this vain fear that there will be no more merit if free will is taken away. It is foolish to be frightened away from what Scripture itself calls us to. 'If you have received all things,' Paul says, 'why do you boast as if you had not received them?' You see that for this very reason he takes all things away from free will and leaves no room for merit. Yet since God's generosity is boundless and inexhaustible, the graces He bestows on us — because He makes them truly ours — He rewards as though they were our own virtues.

They also bring forward what appears to be taken from Chrysostom: 'If the power to choose good or evil is not ours, then all who share the same nature must be either all good or all evil.' Not far from this is the argument of the author of On the Calling of the Gentiles — whoever he was, the book circulates under the name of Ambrose — when he argues that no one would ever fall away from faith unless God left us in a mutable condition. It is remarkable that such excellent men should fall into such confusion here. How did it not occur to Chrysostom that it is God's election that makes the difference between people? We have no fear of granting what Paul affirms so earnestly: that all are perverse and given to wickedness. But we add with him that it is by God's mercy that not all remain in that perverseness. By nature we are all sick with the same disease. Only those on whom it has pleased God to lay His healing hand recover. The rest, whom in His just judgment He passes over, waste away in their own corruption until they are consumed. The reason some continue to the end and others fail in their course is no different. Perseverance itself is God's gift — a gift He does not distribute evenly to all but gives to those it pleases Him to give it to. If someone asks why some hold firm and others fall away in unsteadiness, we know no other reason than this: God sustains the one group, strengthened by His power so they do not perish, while He does not give the same strength to the other, so that they become examples of instability.

They press on further, saying that exhortations are useless, that admonitions serve no purpose, that it is foolish to rebuke if the sinner has no power to obey. When similar objections were raised against Augustine in his own time, he was compelled to write On Rebuke and Grace. While he thoroughly sweeps away such objections at length, he reduces his adversaries' argument to this summary: 'O man, in the commandment learn what you ought to do; in correction, learn that you do not have it by your own fault; in prayer, learn from where you may receive what you need.' He makes essentially the same argument in The Spirit and the Letter, where he teaches that God does not measure His commandments by the strength of man, but when He commands what is right, He freely gives His elect the power to fulfill it. This does not require a lengthy dispute. For in this case we are not alone — Christ and all the apostles stand with us. Let those who disagree consider how well they will fare when they pit themselves against such adversaries. Does Christ, who testifies that we can do nothing without Him, any the less rebuke and discipline those who did evil without Him? Does He any the less call every person to devote themselves to good works? How severely does Paul reprove the Corinthians for neglecting love? And yet he prays to God that that same love would be given to them. He testifies in Romans that it is not of the one who wills nor of the one who runs but of God who shows mercy — and yet he never stops afterward exhorting, encouraging, and rebuking. Why then do they not take issue with the Lord for wasting His effort by requiring from people what only He can give, and by punishing what is done through lack of His grace? Why do they not tell Paul to spare those in whose hands it is not to will or to run, but only in the mercy of God who goes before them — a mercy which in some cases He has withheld? As if the Lord did not have a very good reason for His manner of teaching — a reason readily found by those who seek it reverently. But how much exhortation, admonition, and rebuke can accomplish on their own in changing the mind, Paul makes clear when he writes that neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth actually accomplishes anything. So we see that Moses establishes the commandments of the law with great authority, and the prophets call people to account sharply and threaten transgressors — and yet they freely confess that people only become wise when a heart is given to them to understand. They confess that it is God's own work to circumcise hearts, to give hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone, to write His law on the inmost parts of people — and finally, in renewing souls, to make His teaching effective.

What purpose, then, do exhortations serve? This purpose: when they are despised by the wicked with a stubborn heart, they will stand as witness against those people when they come to the Lord's judgment seat — and even now they strike and press against their conscience. However much the most corrupt person mocks them, he cannot disprove them. But you might ask: what can wretched people do if the softness of heart required for obedience has been withheld from them? The real question is: why does the person excuse himself, when he can blame the hardness of his heart on no one but himself? So the wicked, who would gladly laugh exhortations away if they could, are beaten down by their force whether they will it or not. But the chief benefit toward the faithful is what must be chiefly considered. Since the Lord works all things in them by His Spirit, He does not abandon the instrument of His word — He uses it with full effect. Let this therefore stand as true: all the strength of the godly rests in the grace of God, according to the prophet's word: 'I will give them a new heart that they may walk in My statutes' (Ezekiel 11:19). But you might ask: why then are they admonished of their duty instead of simply being left to the direction of the Holy Spirit? Why are they moved by exhortation, since they can make no greater progress than the Spirit's prompting produces? Why are they rebuked if they go astray, since they fell by the inevitable weakness of the flesh? 'O man, who are you to lay down a law for God?' If it is His pleasure that we be prepared by exhortation to receive the very grace by which that exhortation is obeyed, what is there in this arrangement for you to find fault with? Even if exhortations and rebukes did nothing else for the godly but reprove them of sin, they would on that basis alone be far from useless. As it is, since the Holy Spirit working inwardly uses them powerfully to inflame desire for goodness, to shake off laziness, to remove the pleasure and poison-sweetness of wickedness, and to produce instead a hatred and loathing of it — who would dare say they are superfluous? If anyone requires a plainer answer, here it is: God works in His elect in two ways — inwardly by His Spirit, and outwardly by His word. By His Spirit, enlightening their minds and shaping their hearts to love and keep justice, He makes them new creatures. By His word, He stirs them to desire, seek, and attain that same renewal. By both together He displays the effective working of His hand, in proportion to how He distributes His grace. When He sends that same word to the reprobate — though not for their amendment — He makes it serve another purpose: it presses their conscience even now, and on the day of judgment it makes them all the more without excuse. So even though Christ declares that no one comes to Him except those the Father draws, and that the elect come after hearing and being taught by the Father (John 6:44), He does not therefore neglect the office of teacher. He calls diligently with His voice those who must also be inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit if they are to benefit at all. And Paul teaches that teaching is not wasted even on the reprobate, for to them it is 'the fragrance from death to death' — and yet still a fragrance pleasing to God (2 Corinthians 2:16).

Our opponents work very hard at piling up Scripture testimonies — they do this deliberately, so that even if they cannot overpower us with the weight of any single argument, they may overwhelm us with sheer numbers. But as in battle, when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, a larger but weaker army — however impressive its display — is broken and routed by a few well-placed blows, so it will be very easy for us to overthrow them with their whole assembly. For since the passages they misuse against us, when divided into their categories, all come down to a few key points, one answer will serve for many of them — so there is no need to spend time dissolving each one separately. Their main force lies in the commandments, which they believe are proportioned to our strength, so that whatever is shown to be required by the one must necessarily be achievable by the other. They therefore go through commandment after commandment and use them to measure the extent of our ability. They argue: either God is mocking us when He charges us with holiness, godliness, obedience, chastity, love, and gentleness, and when He forbids us uncleanness, idolatry, unchasteness, anger, theft, pride, and the like — or else He requires only things that are within our power. We may sort all the commandments they pile together into roughly three categories. Some require our initial conversion to God. Some speak simply of keeping the law. Others command us to continue in the grace of God we have already received. We will first address them in general, then turn to the specific categories. It has long been a common practice to extend the reach of the law's commandments to human power, and it has some plausibility — but it proceeded from the grossest ignorance of the law. Those who think it offensive to say that keeping the law is impossible rest on this argument: that otherwise the law was given in vain. But they speak as if Paul had never written a word about the law. I ask them: what is meant by these statements — that the law was added because of transgressions; that through the law comes knowledge of sin; that the law produces sin; that the law entered so that sin might increase (Galatians 3:10; Romans 3:20; Romans 7:7)? Was the law meant to be scaled down to our strength so that it would not be given in vain? Or was it set far above us precisely in order to expose our weakness? The same apostle defines the fulfillment of the law as love (1 Timothy 1:5). But when he prays for the Thessalonians' hearts to be filled with love, he thereby confesses that the law sounds in our ears to no profit unless God pours its full requirement into our hearts (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

Truly, if Scripture taught nothing more than that the law is a rule of life we ought to follow with our best effort, I would agree with their position without hesitation. But since Scripture carefully and clearly sets out the many purposes of the law, it is better to consider through that fuller account what the law can actually accomplish in man. For the present argument, what Scripture teaches is this: as soon as the law has stated what we ought to do, the power to obey it comes from God's goodness — and therefore the law drives us to prayer, so that we may ask God for what we lack. If there were only the commandment with no promise attached, then our strength might be tested against whether it was sufficient to answer the commandment. But since the commandments come with promises that declare that not only our help but our entire ability rests in the aid of God's grace, those promises testify far more than adequately that we are entirely unfit and far from sufficient to keep the law. Let it therefore no longer be insisted that our strength must be proportional to God's commandments, as if the Lord had calibrated His standard of justice to our level of weakness. Rather, His promises should teach us how unready we are in ourselves — we who need His grace in every respect. But they ask: who would believe that the Lord appointed His law for senseless blocks of wood? No one is trying to persuade anyone of that. The wicked are no blocks of wood — when taught by the law that their desires are at war with God, they are convicted by their own testimony. Nor are the godly mere blocks — when the law reminds them of their weakness, they flee to grace. To this purpose belong these sayings of Augustine: 'The Lord commands things we cannot do, so that we may know what we ought to ask of Him.' 'The commandments are of great value, if so much is granted to free will that the grace of God may be honored the more.' 'Faith obtains what the law commands — indeed, the law commands precisely so that faith may obtain what the law commands. Indeed, God requires faith itself of us, but finds nothing to require unless He first gives what He is to find.' And again: 'Let God give what He commands, and command what He will.'

This will become even clearer when we examine the three categories of commandments mentioned above. The Lord frequently commands in both the law and the prophets that we turn to Him. Yet the prophet in turn responds: 'Turn me, Lord, and I shall be turned — for after You turned me, I repented.' God commands us to circumcise the uncircumcised foreskin of our heart, yet through Moses He declares that this circumcision is done by His own hand. He everywhere requires newness of heart, but elsewhere He testifies that it is given by Himself. 'What God promises,' says Augustine, 'we do not achieve by free will or nature — He Himself accomplishes it by grace.' This is the same point Augustine notes in the fifth rule of Ticonius: that we must carefully distinguish between the law and the promises, between commandments and grace. Away, then, with those who derive from the commandments a measure of human ability toward obedience in a way that destroys the grace of God by which the commandments themselves are fulfilled. The commandments of the second sort are direct — they tell us to honor God, to serve Him and cleave to His will, to keep His commandments, and to follow His teaching. And yet innumerable passages testify that whatever righteousness, holiness, godliness, or purity we have is His gift. The third sort was illustrated by the exhortation of Paul and Barnabas to the faithful, as Luke records — that they should continue in the grace of God. But where the strength for that perseverance is to come from, Paul himself states in another place: 'Finally, brethren, be strong in the Lord.' In another place he tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom we have been sealed until the day of redemption. But since this requirement could not be fulfilled by people on their own, he prays it for the Thessalonians from God — that God would count them worthy of His holy calling and fulfill in them every good purpose and work of faith. Likewise in his second letter to the Corinthians, when treating the subject of charitable giving, he repeatedly calls for their willing and godly generosity — and yet a little later he thanks God for having put it into the heart of Titus to take on the task of exhorting them. If Titus could not even use his own mouth to exhort others except insofar as God moved him, how could the others have been willing to give unless God Himself had directed their hearts?

The more clever among them find a way to parry all these testimonies by suggesting that nothing prevents us from combining our own efforts with God's help for our weak endeavors. They also bring in passages from the prophets where the work of our conversion appears to be divided between God and us, such as: 'Turn to Me, and I will turn to you.' We have shown above what kind of help the Lord provides, and there is no need to repeat it here. I ask only this one concession: that it is false to conclude that we have the power to fulfill the law simply because God commands obedience to it. It is evident that the grace of the Lawgiver is both necessary for us and promised to us for the fulfilling of all His commandments. From this it plainly follows that at least more is required of us than we are able to supply. That statement of Jeremiah cannot be explained away by any clever argument: that the covenant God made with the ancient people was void because it was only of the letter, and that it could be established only when the Spirit came to frame their hearts to obedience. Nor does 'Turn to Me and I will turn to you' support their error. For what is meant there is not the turning of God by which He renews our hearts to repentance, but the turning by which He shows Himself gracious and merciful in outward blessings — just as through adversity He sometimes shows His displeasure. When the people, afflicted with many miseries and calamities, complained that God had turned away from them, He answered that they would not lack His favor if they returned to upright living and to Him who is the pattern of righteousness. The passage is therefore wrongly twisted when it is made to suggest that the work of our conversion is divided between God and man. We have treated this subject briefly here because the proper place to address it at length is when we come to treat of the law.

Their second line of argument is much like the first. They cite the promises in which God makes a covenant with our will, such as: 'Seek good and not evil, and you shall live.' 'If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword — for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.' And: 'If you put away your abominations from My sight, then you will not be driven out. If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God and observe all His commandments which I command you today, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.' And similar passages. They think — awkwardly and as if in mockery — that the benefits God offers in His promises are assigned to our own will, as if it were in our power to secure them or throw them away. It is easy to make this argument sound impressive with eloquent complaints: that the Lord is cruelly mocking us when He declares that His favor depends on our will, if that will is not in our power; that God's generosity would be a fine thing indeed if He set His benefits before us while we had no power to take them; and that there is something remarkable about promises that depend on an impossibility and can therefore never be fulfilled. We will address conditional promises more fully in another place, where it will be plain that there is no absurdity in their impossible fulfillment. As for the present question: I deny that God is unkindly mocking us when He calls us to merit His benefits, knowing us to be utterly unable to do so. For since the promises are offered both to the faithful and to the wicked, they serve a purpose with both groups. Just as God's commandments prick the conscience of the wicked so that they cannot enjoy their sins in complete forgetfulness of His judgments, so in His promises He brings them, in a sense, as witnesses of their own unworthiness of His goodness. Who could deny that it is entirely just and fitting that the Lord should bless those who honor Him and punish those who despise His majesty according to His severity? Therefore God acts rightly and appropriately when, in His promises to the wicked who are bound in the chains of sin, He attaches the condition that they will receive His benefits only if they depart from their wickedness — or at least so that they may understand how rightly they are excluded from the things that belong to the true worshippers of God. Furthermore, since God seeks by every means to stir up the faithful to call upon His grace, it is entirely fitting that He should also use promises for this purpose — just as we have shown that commandments have been profitably used toward them. Being informed of God's will through His commandments, we are reminded of our own misery — how far our whole heart falls short — and we are thereby stirred to call upon His Spirit to direct us in the right way. And because our sluggishness is not sufficiently sharpened by commandments alone, promises are added to allure us with a certain sweetness to love righteousness. And the more we desire righteousness, the more fervently we will seek God's favor. Notice, then, how in these conditions — 'if you will' and 'if you will hear' — the Lord gives us neither the power to will nor the power to hear, and yet He does not mock us for lacking that power.

Their third line of argument is closely related to the two previous ones. They bring forward passages in which God rebukes the ungrateful people and says that it was entirely their own fault that they did not receive from His tender love all the good things He intended for them. Among such passages are these: 'The Amalekite and the Canaanite are before you, and you will fall by their sword, because you refused to obey the Lord.' 'Because I called and you did not answer, I will do to this house what I did to Shiloh.' And: 'This nation did not hear the voice of the Lord their God, nor accept correction, therefore they are rejected by the Lord.' And: 'Because you hardened your heart and would not obey the Lord, all these evils have come upon you.' How, they ask, could such rebukes be laid against the people if they could readily answer: 'We loved prosperity and feared adversity, but in failing to obey the Lord in order to obtain the one and avoid the other, we were unable to do otherwise, because we were subject to sin's dominion. Therefore these evils should not be charged to us, since it was not in our power to avoid them.' But setting aside the appeal to necessity — which is a weak and sickly defense — I ask them whether they can clear themselves of all fault. For if they are found guilty of any fault, the Lord has every reason to reproach them for bringing upon themselves the loss of His mercy through their own perversity. Let them answer, then, whether they can deny that their stubborn will was the cause of their stubbornness. If they find the source of the evil within themselves, why do they look everywhere else for external causes, as if they were not the authors of their own destruction? And if it is true that sinners are both deprived of God's benefits and punished through their own fault and no one else's, then there is every reason for them to hear these rebukes from God's mouth — so that, if they persist stubbornly in their faults, they may learn in their misery to accuse and hate their own wickedness rather than charge God with cruel injustice. And if they retain any willingness to be taught, they may grow weary of the sins through whose deserts they see themselves miserable and ruined, and may return to the right way — acknowledging with sincere confession what the Lord recounts in rebuking them. That such prophetic rebukes had this effect on the godly is shown by Daniel's solemn prayer in chapter nine. For the first use — making sinners feel responsible — we see an example in the Jews, to whom Jeremiah was commanded to declare the cause of their miseries, even though the outcome had already been foreordained by the Lord: 'You shall speak all these words to them, and they will not listen; you will call to them, and they will not answer.' To what end, then, was he sent to preach to deaf ears? So that even against their will and unwillingness, they might understand that what they heard was true — and that it would be wicked sacrilege to lay on God the blame for evils that rested in themselves. These few answers will enable you to make easy work of the infinite heap of testimonies that the enemies of God's grace customarily pile together — drawn from both commandments and denunciations against lawbreakers — in order to erect an idol of free will. It is said reproachfully in the Psalms of the Jews: 'A perverse generation that did not make their heart upright.' In another psalm the prophet urges the people of his day not to harden their hearts, because all the fault of stubbornness rests in the perversity of people themselves. But it is foolish to conclude from this that the heart is pliable in either direction, since the preparation of the heart belongs to God alone. The psalmist says: 'I have inclined my heart to keep Your commandments' — expressing his willing and wholehearted devotion to God. Yet he does not boast of being the author of that inclination, which he confesses in the same psalm to be God's gift. We must therefore hold firmly in mind Paul's exhortation: he urges the faithful to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling — because it is the Lord who works both the willing and the doing. He does assign them duties and calls them to activity, so that they will not give themselves over to the laziness of the flesh. But by commanding fear and carefulness he so humbles them that they remember the very thing they are commanded to do is properly God's work. He plainly indicates that the faithful work, so to speak, passively — insofar as power is supplied to them from heaven — so that they should claim nothing at all for themselves. Therefore when Peter urges us to add diligence to our faith, he is not granting us a second separate ability to act on our own, but only shaking off the sluggishness of the flesh by which faith itself is so often smothered. Paul's words 'Do not quench the Spirit' serve the same purpose, since laziness often creeps over the faithful if not checked. But if anyone concludes from this that it lies within their own choice to nurture the light offered to them, that ignorance is easily corrected: because the very diligence Paul requires comes from God alone. We are also frequently commanded to cleanse ourselves from all defilement — and yet the Holy Spirit claims for Himself alone the work of sanctification. Finally, that the same thing which belongs properly to God is also attributed in a transferred sense to us is clear from John's words: 'Whoever is born of God keeps himself.' Those who promote free will seize on this as if we were kept safe partly by God's power and partly by our own — as though the very safekeeping the apostle mentions had not come from heaven. For this reason Christ also prays His Father to keep us from evil, and we know that the godly, while they fight against Satan, gain the victory through no army or weapons of their own, but only through the armor and weapons of God. So when Peter commanded us to purify our souls in the obedience of truth, he immediately added as a correction: 'by the Holy Spirit.' Finally, John briefly shows how all human strength is powerless in the spiritual battle when he says that those born of God cannot sin, because God's seed abides in them. And in another place he gives the reason: because our faith is the victory that overcomes the world.

A testimony from the law of Moses is also raised against us, and it appears to carry considerable weight against our position. After publishing the law, Moses declares to the people: 'For this commandment that I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven... but the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it' (Deuteronomy 30:11).

If this is taken as a plain statement about the commandments themselves, I grant it would not be without some force in the present argument. Though it might be easy enough to dismiss it by saying that Moses is speaking not of how easy the law is to keep but of how clearly it is known, even that response might leave some doubt. But the apostle, who is no uncertain interpreter, removes all doubt — for he affirms that Moses was here speaking of the doctrine of the gospel. If any stubborn person insists that Paul violently distorted those words to make them refer to the gospel, that boldness would not be without impiety, and there is sufficient reason apart from apostolic authority to refute it. For if Moses spoke only of the commandments, he was filling the people with a most empty confidence. What else would they have done but plunged headlong to ruin, if they had taken on themselves the keeping of the law as a thing within their own ability? Where is the supposed readiness to keep the law, if the only access to it ends in a headlong fall to destruction? Therefore nothing is more certain than that Moses in these words was pointing to the covenant of mercy, which he had published alongside the strict demands of the law. For just a few verses earlier he had taught that our hearts must be circumcised by the hand of God so that we may love Him. He therefore placed this ease he speaks of — not in human strength, but in the help and power of the Holy Spirit who performs His work mightily in our weakness. Indeed the passage should not be understood simply as referring to commandments at all, but rather to the promises of the gospel — which are so far from establishing any human power to attain righteousness that they utterly overthrow it. Recognizing this, Paul uses this very testimony (Romans 10:8) to prove that salvation is offered in the gospel not under the hard and impossible condition of the law — which demands that only those who have fulfilled all the commandments shall attain it — but under a condition that is easy, ready, and fully accessible. This testimony therefore gives no support to claims of freedom in the human will (Deuteronomy 30:11).

There are also certain other passages commonly objected, in which God appears to withdraw His supporting grace, test people, and wait to see what they will do with their effort — such as Hosea: 'I will go away and return to My place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face' (Hosea 5:15). It would be foolish, they argue, for the Lord to observe whether Israel would seek His face unless their minds were pliable and could bend themselves to one side or the other of their own will. As if it were not God's customary way in the prophets to make a show of despising and casting off His people until they have amended their lives. But what exactly will our opponents derive from such threatening passages? If they mean to conclude that a people forsaken by God can arrange their own salvation, all of Scripture will cry out against them. If they acknowledge that God's grace is necessary for conversion, why do they dispute with us? The truth is they grant it as necessary but still insist on preserving man's own power alongside it. How do they prove that? Certainly not from this passage or any like it. For there is a great difference between stepping back from a person and watching what he will do when left entirely to himself, and supplying modest help proportional to his limited strength. What do such expressions mean, then? I answer that they are equivalent to God saying: 'Since this stubborn people have profited nothing from My admonishing, exhorting, and rebuking, I will withdraw for a time, sit quietly, and let them be afflicted. I will see if, after long miseries, they will at last begin to remember Me and seek My face.' God's going far away signifies the withdrawal of prophecy; His watching what people will do signifies that He, keeping silence and hiding Himself as it were, for a time exercises them with various afflictions. He does both of these things to humble us the more. We would be hardened rather than improved by the scourges of adversity, unless He shaped us to responsiveness by His Spirit. Therefore, when the Lord — offended and, in a manner, wearied by our stubborn obstinacy — temporarily withdraws Himself by taking away His word through which He normally gives us a certain presence of Himself, and makes a test of what we would do in His absence, it is completely wrong to conclude from this that there is any power of free will for Him to observe and test. He does this for one purpose only: to drive us to acknowledge that we are nothing in ourselves (Hosea 5:15).

They also bring in their defense the common manner of speaking found both in Scripture and in ordinary life. Good works are called ours, and Scripture says we do what is holy and pleasing to God just as readily as it says we commit sins. If sins are justly attributed to us as proceeding from us, then by the same reasoning something in righteous deeds ought also to be assigned to us. It would make no sense, they say, to speak of us as doing things when we are moved by God like stones, incapable of any motion of our own. So while they grant the chief part to God's grace, these expressions of speech show that our effort still plays a secondary role. If the argument rested only on good works being called ours, I would respond that daily bread is also called ours when we pray for God to give it to us. What does the title of possession prove, except that by God's generosity and free gift the thing becomes ours — even though it was not naturally ours? So either let them mock the same logic in the Lord's Prayer, or let them stop treating it as an absurdity that good works are called ours, when we have no ownership in them except by God's liberality. But it is somewhat stronger when Scripture frequently says that we ourselves worship God, obey the law, and practice good works. Since these are the proper activities of mind and will, how can they be attributed both to the Holy Spirit and to us, unless there is some combining of our effort with God's power? We can escape from these entanglements easily if we consider carefully how the Spirit of the Lord works in holy people. The comparison our opponents push so aggressively against us misses the point entirely — who is so foolish as to think that the motion of a person is no different from the throwing of a stone? Nothing of the kind follows from our doctrine. We count among the natural powers of man: to approve and refuse, to will and not will, to strive and to resist — that is, to approve vanity and refuse perfect goodness, to will evil and be unwilling toward good, to strive after wickedness and resist righteousness. What does the Lord do with this? If it is His will to use that perversity as an instrument of His wrath, He directs and appoints it to whatever end He pleases, so that by an evil hand He may execute His good work. Shall we then compare a wicked man who serves God's power in this way — while he labors only to obey his own desire — to a stone thrown by outside force, carried along with no motion, no sense, and no will of its own? We see how great the difference is. But what does God do in good things — which is the chief question? When He establishes His kingdom in the faithful, He by His Spirit restrains their will so that it is no longer driven about by wandering desires according to nature's inclination. So that the will may be bent toward holiness and righteousness, He bends, shapes, fashions, and directs it to the standard of His righteousness. And so that it will not stumble and fall, He establishes and confirms it with the strength of His Spirit. For this reason Augustine writes: 'You will say to me: then we are wrought upon, and do not work ourselves. Indeed you both work and are wrought upon — and you work well when you are being wrought upon by what is good. The Spirit of God who works in you helps those who work, and calls Himself a helper because you also do something.' In the first part he teaches that man's working is not abolished by the Holy Spirit's moving, because the will belongs to human nature, which is guided to aspire toward goodness. But when he immediately adds that by the title 'helper' it may be gathered that we too do something, we must not take this as if he were assigning us some separate and independent role. Rather, because he did not want to encourage laziness in us, he pairs God's working with ours in such a way that the willing belongs to our nature but the willing well belongs to grace. This is why he had said a little earlier: 'Unless God helps us, we will not be able to overcome — indeed, we will not even be able to fight at all.'

From all this it is clear that the grace of God — as the word is used when we speak of regeneration — is the rule of the Spirit directing and governing the will of man. It cannot govern the will unless it also corrects it, reforms it, and renews it — which is why we say that regeneration begins with the destruction of what is our own. It must also move the will, stir it, drive it forward, carry it along, and hold it firm. Therefore we rightly say that all the actions proceeding from the renewed will are wholly and entirely the work of that grace alone. At the same time we do not deny what Augustine teaches: that the will is not destroyed by grace but rather restored. For both of these things stand together very well: that man's will is said to be restored when its faultiness and perversity are reformed and it is directed to the true standard of righteousness — and also that a new will is said to be created in man, since it is so defiled and corrupted that it needs to put on an entirely new nature. There is therefore no reason why we should not also say that we ourselves do what the Spirit of God does in us — even though our own will, considered in itself, contributes nothing that can be separated from His grace. We must therefore keep in mind what we have already cited from Augustine: that some people vainly search for some good in the human will that is truly its own. Whatever people try to mix from the strength of free will into the grace of God, they are only corrupting grace — like diluting wine with muddy and bitter water. But even though whatever good is in the human will proceeds from the sole impulse of the Holy Spirit, because willing is naturally planted in us it is not without reason that what God claims the credit for is said to be done by us. First, because everything He works in us by His goodness belongs to us — so long as we understand that it is not of ourselves. Second, because the mind is ours, the will is ours, and the effort is ours — it is these that He directs toward good.

The other testimonies they scrape together here and there will not trouble even those of modest understanding who have fully grasped the answers given above. They cite the statement from Genesis: 'Its desire is for you, and you shall rule over it.' They interpret this as referring to sin, as if the Lord was promising Cain that sin's power would not overcome his mind if he would labor to subdue it. We say it fits the context far better to read this as spoken about Abel. For God's purpose there was to rebuke the wickedness of the envy that Cain had conceived against his brother, and He does so on two grounds. First, that Cain was vainly scheming to surpass his brother in God's sight, before whom only righteousness receives honor. Second, that he was far too ungrateful for the benefit God had already given him — being unable to bear his brother even though that brother was under his authority. But lest we be thought to embrace this interpretation only because the other is against us, let us grant that God was speaking about sin. If so, then God is either making a promise or issuing a command. If a command — we have already shown that commands do not prove human ability. If a promise — where is its fulfillment? For Cain became subject to sin, over which he should have had dominion. Someone will say the promise contained an implicit condition, as if God had said he would have victory if he strove for it. But who would accept such a twisted interpretation? For if this dominion refers to sin, no one can doubt that it is spoken in the form of a command — which does not determine what we are able to do but what we ought to do, even if it is beyond our power. In any case, both the subject matter and the grammatical structure require that a comparison be made between Cain and Abel — for it was only by his own wicked conduct that the older brother came to be placed below the younger.

They also use the apostle's statement: 'It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.' From this they conclude that something exists in man's will and effort which, though weak in itself, when helped by God's mercy is not without successful results. But if they carefully weighed what Paul is actually discussing there, they would not so rashly misuse this sentence. I know they can bring forward Origen and Jerome in support of their interpretation — and I could set Augustine against them. But what those writers thought is not what matters — what matters is what Paul meant. Paul is there teaching that salvation is prepared only for those to whom the Lord is pleased to grant His mercy, and that ruin and destruction await all those He has not chosen. Using Pharaoh as an example of the reprobate's condition, and having confirmed the certainty of free election through Moses's testimony — 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy' — he draws the conclusion: 'So then it does not depend on man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.' If this were understood to mean that willing or running are insufficient because they are too weak for so great a weight, Paul's statement would have been poorly framed. Away then with such word-play — 'it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, therefore there is some willing and some running.' Paul's meaning is simply this: it is not the will, it is not the running that secures the way of salvation — it is the mercy of God alone. He says nothing different here than he says in Titus, where he writes that the goodness and kindness of God appeared not through works of righteousness which we had done, but according to His infinite mercy. The very people who use this argument — that Paul must mean there is some willing and some running since he said it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs — would not allow me to reason the same way: namely, that we have done some good works, since Paul says we have not obtained God's goodness by the good works we have done. If they see the flaw in that argument, let them open their eyes and they will see that their own argument has the same defect. For Augustine's reasoning is sound: if it were said 'it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs' simply because willing and running by themselves are insufficient, then by the same logic we could say 'it is not of the mercy of God' because mercy alone does not work it. Since that conclusion is absurd, Augustine rightly concludes that the statement means this: there is no good will in man unless the Lord prepares it — not that we should not will and run, but because God works both in us. No less unsuitably do some twist Paul's statement 'we are co-workers with God' — which without doubt refers only to ministers of the word. They are called co-workers with God not because they bring anything of their own, but because God uses their service after He has made them fit and equipped them with the necessary gifts.

They bring forward Ecclesiasticus — a book whose authority, as is well known, is disputed. But even if we do not reject it — as we would be within our rights to do — what does it actually testify for free will? It says that when man was created he was left in the hand of his own counsel; that commandments were given to him, which if he kept them would preserve him; that before man was set life and death, good and evil; and that whatever he chose would be given to him. Granted that man received from his creation the power to choose either life or death. What if we answer on the other side that he lost that power? It is certainly not my intention to dispute with Solomon, who affirms that man was created upright at the beginning and forged for himself many schemes. But since man in straying lost — as if in a shipwreck — both himself and all his good things, it does not follow that everything belonging to the original creation belongs equally to his corrupted and fallen nature. My answer, therefore, to this author of Ecclesiasticus, whoever he may be — and not to him alone — is this: if you intend to instruct man to seek within himself the power to attain salvation, your authority does not carry enough weight with us to prejudice the undoubted word of God, even in the slightest. But if your aim is only to restrain the malice of the flesh, which — by blaming its evils on God — seeks a vain defense for itself, and you therefore reply that uprightness was given to man so it might be clear that he himself was the cause of his own destruction — then I willingly agree. Provided you also agree with me in this: that by his own fault he is now stripped of the gifts with which God clothed him at the beginning. Let us then together confess that he now needs a physician far more than a defender.

Our opponents also frequently cite Christ's parable of the traveler who was beaten by robbers and left half dead on the road. It is well known that nearly all the church writers use this story as a picture of humanity's ruined condition. From it, our opponents argue that sin and the devil have not so completely crippled man that no remnants of his original goodness remain — since the text says he was left half alive. Where is this half life, they ask, unless some portion of right reason and will survived? But if I were to refuse to accept their allegorical reading altogether, what could they do? There is no doubt the fathers invented this allegorical interpretation beyond the plain meaning of the Lord's words. Allegories may not go further than Scripture itself leads — they are certainly not sufficient on their own to establish doctrine. And there are good reasons why I could, if I chose, overturn this interpretation entirely — because the Word of God does not leave man half alive but teaches that he is completely dead as far as the blessed life is concerned. When Paul speaks of our redemption, he does not say we were healed when we were half dead and half alive, but that we were raised up when we were dead. He does not call on those who are half alive to receive the light of Christ, but on those who are sleeping and buried. The Lord Himself speaks the same way when He says that the hour is coming when the dead will rise again at His voice. How could anyone seriously set this light allegory against so many clear passages of Scripture? But suppose we grant this allegory the force of genuine testimony — what would our opponents actually get from it? Man is half alive, and therefore something safe remains in him. I grant it: he retains a mind capable of understanding, though it cannot penetrate to heavenly and spiritual wisdom; he retains genuine judgment about honesty; he retains some sense of God, though he does not reach the true knowledge of God. But what do all these things accomplish? They certainly cannot take from us Augustine's conclusion — which the schools themselves have accepted as their common teaching — that after man's fall, the freely given gifts on which salvation depends were taken away from him, and that his natural gifts were corrupted and defiled. Let this truth remain firm and unshakable: the mind of man is so estranged from the righteousness of God that it conceives, desires, and pursues all wickedness, filthiness, and wrongdoing; his heart is so thoroughly soaked in the poison of sin that it breathes out nothing but corruption. And even when people display some goodness outwardly, the mind remains wrapped in hypocrisy and deceit, and the heart entangled in inward perverseness.