On the Gift of Perseverance 21–24

So that this opinion, then, displeasing to God and hostile to the free benefits of God by which we are set free, may be destroyed, we maintain that both the beginning of faith and perseverance in it to the end are, according to the Scriptures, from which we have already said much, gifts of God. For if we say that the beginning of faith is from us, so that by it we may merit to receive the other gifts of God, the Pelagians conclude that the grace of God is given according to our merits. The Catholic faith so abhorred this that Pelagius himself, fearing to be condemned, condemned it. Likewise, if we say that our perseverance is from us, not from the Lord, they answer that we have the beginning of faith from ourselves as we have the end, arguing thus: that we have that beginning from ourselves much more if we have from ourselves remaining to the end, since to complete is greater than to begin; and so again and again they conclude that the grace of God is given according to our merits. But if both are the gift of God, and God foreknew that he would give these gifts of his (who can deny it?), predestination must be preached, so that the true grace of God, that is, the grace not given according to our merits, may be defended with an unconquerable fortification. And I indeed in that book whose title is On Rebuke and Grace, which could not satisfy all who love us, think I have so set down that it is the gift of God even to persevere to the end that I had never, or almost never, written it before so expressly and plainly, unless my memory deceives me. But I have not now said this in such a way that no one said it before me. For blessed Cyprian, as we have already shown, so expounded our petitions in the Lord's Prayer as to say that in the very first petition we ask for perseverance, asserting that we pray for it by saying, “Hallowed be your name,” when we have already been hallowed in baptism, so that we may persevere in what we have begun to be. Yet let those, to whom, since they love me, I ought not to be ungrateful, who profess, as you write, that they embrace all my views except what has come into question: let them see, I say, whether in the later parts of the first of those two books which I wrote at the beginning of my episcopate, before the Pelagian heresy appeared, to Simplician, bishop of Milan, anything remained by which it could be called in doubt that the grace of God is not given according to our merits; and whether I did not there show sufficiently that even the beginning of faith is the gift of God; and whether from what is said there it does not follow clearly, even if it is not expressed, that perseverance to the end too is given only by him who has predestined us to his kingdom and glory. Then, did I not publish many years ago that very letter which I wrote, already against the Pelagians, to the holy Paulinus, bishop of Nola, which letter they have now begun to contradict? Let them look also at the one I gave to Sixtus, presbyter of the Roman church, when we were striving against the Pelagians in a most bitter conflict; they will find it such as the one to Paulinus is. From this let them recall that these things were already said and written against the Pelagian heresy some years ago, and that it is a wonder they now displease them. Although I would wish no one so to embrace all my views as to follow me, except in those things in which he sees that I have not erred. For this is why I am now writing books in which I have undertaken to revise my works, to show that I have not followed even myself in all things; but I think that by God's mercy I have written by making progress, not that I began from perfection; since I speak more arrogantly than truly if even now I say that I have at last come, at this age, to writing without any error. But it matters how much and in what matters one errs, and how easily anyone corrects it, or with how much obstinacy he tries to defend his error. For a man is of good hope if the last day of this life finds him so progressing that what was lacking to his progress is added to him, and he is judged to need perfecting rather than punishment. Therefore, if I do not wish to be ungrateful to men who have loved me because some usefulness of my labour reached them before they loved me, how much more to God, whom we would not love unless he had first loved us and made us lovers of him? For love is from him, as those said whom he made not only great lovers but also great preachers of himself. And what is more ungrateful than to deny the very grace of God by saying that it is given according to our merits? This the Catholic faith abhorred in the Pelagians; this it charged against Pelagius himself as a capital crime; this Pelagius himself condemned, not indeed out of love for God's truth, but yet out of fear of his own condemnation. But whoever, as a faithful Catholic, abhors saying that the grace of God is given according to our merits, let him not withdraw faith itself from the grace of God, by which he obtained mercy to be faithful; and therefore let him attribute to the grace of God perseverance too to the end, by which he obtains the mercy which he asks daily, not to be led into temptation. Between the beginning of faith and the completion of perseverance are those things in between by which we live rightly, which they themselves also agree are given us by God, faith obtaining them. All these things, then, the beginning of faith, namely, and his other gifts to the end, God foreknew that he would bestow on his called. It belongs, therefore, to excessive contentiousness to contradict predestination or to doubt about predestination.

Yet it must not be preached to the people in such a way that it seems in some way to be refuted by its very preaching in the eyes of an unskilled multitude or one of slower understanding; just as the foreknowledge of God (which certainly they cannot deny) seems to be refuted if it is said to men, “Whether you run or sleep, you will be what he who cannot be deceived has foreknown.” It is the part of a deceitful or unskilled physician to bind on even a useful medicine in such a way that it either does no good or does harm. But it must be said, “So run that you may obtain,” and that by your very running you may know that you were foreknown as such that you would run lawfully; and in whatever other way the foreknowledge of God can be preached so that man's sloth may be repelled. Although, then, the fixed sentence of God's will concerning predestination stands thus, that some, having received the will to obey, are converted from unbelief to faith or persevere in the faith, while the rest, who linger in the delight of damnable sins, if they too are predestined, have not yet risen because the help of pitying grace has not yet raised them up (for if any are not yet called whom he has predestined by his grace to be chosen, they will receive that same grace by which they may will and be chosen; but if any obey, but are not predestined to his kingdom and glory, they are temporary and will not remain to the end in that same obedience): although, then, these things are true, they are not to be said in such a way to a large audience that the discourse is turned upon the hearers themselves, and those words of these men which you inserted in your letter and which I set down above are said to them: “The fixed sentence of God's will concerning predestination stands thus, that some of you have come from unbelief to faith, having received the will to obey.” What need is there to say “some of you”? For if we speak to the church of God, if we speak to believers, why, by saying that some of them have come to faith, should we seem to do wrong to the rest, when we can more fittingly say: “The fixed sentence of God's will concerning predestination stands thus, that you have come from unbelief to faith, having received the will to obey, and, having received perseverance, remain in the faith”? Nor should what follows be said at all, namely: “But the rest of you, who linger in the delight of sins, have not yet risen because the help of pitying grace has not yet raised you up.” For it can and should be said well and fittingly: “But if any of you still linger in the delight of damnable sins, lay hold of most wholesome discipline; yet when you have done so, do not be lifted up as though about your own works, or glory as though you had not received this; for it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will, and your steps are directed by the Lord so that you may will his way; but from your good and right running itself learn that you belong to the predestination of divine grace.” Likewise what follows and is said, “But if any of you are not yet called whom he has predestined by his grace to be chosen, you will receive that same grace by which you may will and be chosen,” is said more harshly than it can be said, if we consider that we are speaking not to any men whatever, but to the church of Christ. For why is it not rather said thus: “And if there are any not yet called, let us pray for them that they may be called”? For perhaps they have been so predestined that they are granted to our prayers and receive that same grace by which they may will and become elect. For God, who has fulfilled all that he predestined, therefore willed that we pray even for the enemies of the faith, so that we might understand from this that he himself gives even to unbelievers that they believe, and makes them willing from unwilling. Now as to what is joined to those words, I wonder whether anyone weak among the Christian people can in any way hear it patiently, when it is said to them: “And if any of you obey, if you are predestined to be rejected, the strength to obey will be withdrawn, so that you cease to obey.” For to say this, what does it seem but to curse, or in a way to prophesy evil? But if it pleases, or is necessary, to say something about those who do not persevere, why is it not at least said rather as I said a little earlier: first, that this be said not of those themselves who hear among the people, but of others to them; that is, that it be said not, “If any of you obey, if you are predestined to be rejected,” but, “If any obey,” and the rest, in the third person of the verb, not the second? For a thing not desirable but abominable is said, and dashed most harshly and hatefully, as it were, against the hearers' faces by addressing them, when he who speaks to them says, “And if there are any of you who obey, if you are predestined to be rejected, the strength to obey will be withdrawn, so that you cease to obey.” For what does the meaning lose if it is said thus: “But if any obey, but are not predestined to his kingdom and glory, they are temporary and will not remain to the end in that same obedience”? Is not the same thing said both more truly and more fittingly, so that we do not seem to wish such an evil on them, but to report of others what they may hate and think does not concern them, by hoping and praying for better things? But in that way in which they think it should be said, the same sentence, in almost the same words, can be pronounced also of the foreknowledge of God, which they certainly cannot deny, so as to say: “And if any of you obey, if you are foreknown to be rejected, you will cease to obey.” This is certainly most true; quite so, but most unseemly, most untimely, most unfitting; not by false speech, but speech not wholesomely applied to the health of human weakness. Even that manner which we have said should be used in preaching predestination I do not think ought to suffice one speaking before the people, unless he adds this or something like it, saying: “You, then, ought to hope for perseverance in obedience itself too from the Father of lights, from whom comes down every best gift and every perfect gift, and to ask for it in daily prayers, and by doing this to trust that you are not strangers to the predestination of his people; since he himself grants that you do this too. But far be it from you to despair of yourselves because you are commanded to have your hope in him, not in yourselves. For cursed is everyone who has his hope in man; and it is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man, since blessed are all who trust in him. Holding this hope, serve the Lord in fear and rejoice to him with trembling; since of the eternal life which the God who does not lie promised to the sons of the promise before eternal times no one can be secure until this life, which is a trial upon earth, is completed; but he will make us persevere in him to the end of this life, he to whom we say daily, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’” When these and similar things are said, whether to a few Christians or to the multitude of the church, why do we fear to preach the predestination of the saints and the true grace of God, that is, the grace not given according to our merits, as holy Scripture preaches it? Or is it to be feared that a man will despair of himself when his hope is shown to be placed in God, but would not despair if, most proud and most unhappy, he placed it in himself?

And would that the slow of heart and the weak, who cannot, or cannot yet, understand the Scriptures or their expositions, would so hear or not hear our disputations on this question as rather to look at their own prayers, which the church has always had and will have from its beginnings until this age is ended! For of this matter, which we are now compelled against the new heretics not merely to mention but plainly to protect and defend, the church has never been silent in its prayers, even if sometimes, with no adversary pressing, it did not think it should be set forth in sermons. For when has prayer not been made in the church for unbelievers and its enemies, that they might believe? When has any believer had a friend, neighbour, or spouse who was an unbeliever, and not asked of the Lord for him a mind obedient to the Christian faith? And who has ever not prayed for himself that he might remain in the Lord? Or who, if a priest invoking the Lord over the faithful ever said, “Grant them, O Lord, to persevere in you to the end,” has dared to find fault, not only with his voice but even in thought, and not rather answered “Amen” over such a blessing of his, with believing heart and confessing mouth? Since in the Lord's Prayer itself the faithful pray for nothing else, especially when they say, “Lead us not into temptation,” than that they may persevere in holy obedience. As in these prayers, then, so in this faith the church was born, grows, and has grown: the faith by which it is believed that the grace of God is not given according to the merits of those who receive it. For the church would not pray that faith be given to unbelievers unless it believed that God turns to himself the wills of men both turned away and opposed; nor would the church pray that it might persevere in the faith of Christ, not deceived or overcome by the temptations of the world, unless it believed that the Lord so has our heart in his power that the good which we hold only by our own will we nevertheless do not hold unless he himself works in us even to will. For if the church asks these things of him but thinks that they are given to it by itself, it has not true but perfunctory prayers; far be it from us! For who truly groans, desiring to receive what he prays for from the Lord, if he thinks that he takes it from himself and not from him? Especially since “we do not know what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself,” says the Apostle, “intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And he who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit minds, because he intercedes for the saints according to God.” What does “the Spirit himself intercedes” mean but “makes us intercede,” with groanings that cannot be uttered, but true, since the Spirit is truth? For it is he of whom he says in another place, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” And what does “crying” mean here but “making us cry,” by that figure by which we call a day joyful which makes people joyful? He makes this plain elsewhere, where he says, “For you have not received the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father.” There he said “crying”; here “in whom we cry,” disclosing how he said “crying,” that is, as I have already explained, “making us cry.” Here we understand that this very thing too is the gift of God, that with a true heart and spiritually we cry to God. Let them notice, then, how those are deceived who think that it is from us, not given to us, that we ask, seek, and knock; and say that this is so, that grace is preceded by our merit, so that it follows when we receive asking, and find seeking, and it is opened to us knocking; and do not want to understand that this too is of the divine gift, that we pray, that is, ask, seek, and knock. For “we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father.” Blessed Ambrose too saw this. For he says: “To pray to God too belongs to spiritual grace, as it is written, No one says Lord Jesus except in the Holy Spirit.” These things, then, which the church asks of the Lord, and has always asked since it began to be, God so foreknew that he would give to his called that he has already given them in predestination itself; which the Apostle declares without ambiguity. For writing to Timothy he says: “Labour with the gospel according to the power of God, who saved us and called us with his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before eternal times, but has now been manifested through the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Let him, then, say that the church at some time did not have in its faith the truth of this predestination and grace, which is now defended with more careful attention against the new heretics; let him, I say, say this who dares to say that at some time it did not pray, or did not truly pray, either that unbelievers might believe or that believers might persevere. But if it has always prayed for these goods, it has certainly always believed them to be gifts of God; nor was it ever lawful for it to deny that they were foreknown by him. And therefore the church of Christ has never been without the faith of this predestination, which is now defended with new care against the new heretics.

But why say more? I think I have taught sufficiently, or rather more than sufficiently, that both to begin to believe in the Lord and to remain in the Lord to the end are gifts of God. The other goods that belong to the godly life by which God is rightly worshipped, even those for whose sake we are doing this grant to be gifts of God. Further, they cannot deny that God foreknew all his gifts and those on whom he was going to bestow them. Just as, then, the other things are to be preached, so that he who preaches them may be heard obediently, so predestination is to be preached, so that he who hears these things obediently may glory not in man, and therefore not in himself, but in the Lord; for this too is a command of God, and to hear this command obediently, that is, that he who glories should glory in the Lord, is, like the rest, the gift of God. Whoever does not have this gift, I do not hesitate to say, has in vain whatever else he has. This we wish the Pelagians to have; and these brothers of ours to have more fully. Let us not, then, be quick in disputations and slow in prayers. Let us pray, dearly beloved, let us pray that the God of grace may grant even to our enemies, and most of all to our brothers and those who love us, to understand and confess that after the huge and unspeakable ruin in which we all fell in one man, no one is set free except by the grace of God; and that it is not rendered as due according to the merits of those who receive it, but given freely as true grace, with no merits going before. Now there is no more illustrious example of predestination than Jesus himself; on which I have already argued in the first book, and have chosen to commend it at the end of this one: there is, I say, no more illustrious example of predestination than the Mediator himself. Whatever believer wants to understand it well, let him look at him, and in him find himself too: a believer, I say, who believes and confesses in him a true human nature, that is, ours, though raised up, by God the Word's singularly taking it up, into the only Son of God, so that he who took up and what he took up were one person in the Trinity. For by the assumption of man no quaternity was made, but the Trinity remained, that assumption ineffably bringing about the truth of one person in God and man. For we do not say that Christ is God only, as the Manichaean heretics do; nor man only, as the Photinian heretics do; nor man in such a way that he lacks something that certainly belongs to human nature, whether the soul, or within the soul the rational mind, or flesh not taken from a woman but made from the Word turned and changed into flesh; all three of which, false and empty, have made three various and different parties of the Apollinarian heretics. But we say that Christ is true God, born of God the Father without any beginning of time; and the same true man, born of a human mother in the appointed fullness of time; and that his humanity, by which he is less than the Father, takes nothing away from his divinity, by which he is equal to the Father. And both of these are one Christ, who according to God said most truly, “I and the Father are one,” and according to man said most truly, “The Father is greater than I.” He, then, who made this man of the seed of David a righteous man, who would never be unrighteous, without any merit of his preceding will, himself makes righteous men from unrighteous without any merit of their preceding will, so that he may be the head and they his members. He, then, who made that man, without any preceding merits of his, to draw by origin or commit by will no sin that would need forgiving, himself, without any preceding merits of theirs, makes believers in him, to whom he forgives every sin. He who made him such that he never has had or will have an evil will, himself makes in his members a good will from an evil one. Both him, then, and us he predestined; because both in him, that he should be our head, and in us, that we should be his body, he foreknew not our merits that would go before but his own works that would come. Let those who read these things, if they understand, give thanks to God; but let those who do not understand pray that he may be their inward teacher, from whose face come knowledge and understanding. But let those who think that I err consider again and again carefully what has been said, lest perhaps they themselves err. As for me, when through those who read my labours I become not only more learned but also more corrected, I acknowledge God to be gracious to me; and this I especially expect through the teachers of the church, if it also comes into their hands and they deign to know what I write.