Chapter 10. Free Will And God’S Grace Are Simultaneously Commended
CHAPTER 10.
FREE WILL AND GOD’S GRACE ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY COMMENDED
When God says, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you,”Zec 1.3 one of these clauses—that which invites our return to God—evidently belongs to our will; while the other, which promises His return to us, belongs to His grace. Here, possibly, the Pelagians think they have a justification for their opinion which they so prominently advance: that God’s grace is given according to our merits. In the East indeed, that is to say, in the province of Palestine in which the city of Jerusalem lies, Pelagius, when examined in person by the bishop, did not venture to affirm this. For it happened that among the objections which were brought up against him, this in particular was objected: he maintained that the grace of God was given according to our merits—an opinion which was so different from catholic doctrine, and so hostile to the grace of Christ, that unless he had anathematized it, as laid to his charge, he himself must have been anathematized on its account. He pronounced, indeed, the required anathema upon the dogma, but how insincerely his later books plainly show; for in them he maintains absolutely no other opinion than that the grace of God is given according to our merits. They collect such passages out of the Scriptures—like the one which I just now quoted, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you,”—as if it were owing to the merit of our turning to God, that His grace were given us — in which He Himself even turns to us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that, unless our turning to God were itself God’s gift, it would not be said to Him in prayer, “Turn us again, O God of hosts;”Psa 80.3 and, “You, O God, will turn and quicken us;”Psa 80.7 and again, “Turn us, O God of our salvation,”Psa 85.4—with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. For with respect to our coming to Christ, what else does it mean than our being turned to Him by believing? And yet He says: “No man can come to me, unless it was given to him by my Father.”Joh 6.65