Grace and Free Will
CHAPTER 23.
THE PELAGIANS MAINTAIN THAT THE LAW IS THE GRACE OF GOD WHICH HELPS US NOT TO SIN
Why, therefore, do those very vain and perverse Pelagians say that the law is the grace of God by which we are helped not to sin? Do they not, by making such an allegation, unhappily and beyond all doubt contradict the great apostle? He indeed says that, by the law, sin received strength against man; and that man, by the commandment—although it is holy, and just, and good—nevertheless dies; and that death works in him through that which is good; there is no deliverance from this death unless the Spirit quickens him, whom the letter had killed. As he says in another passage, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”2Cor 3.6 And yet these obstinate persons, blind to God’s light and deaf to His voice, maintain that the letter which kills gives life, and thus they dispute the quickening Spirit. “Therefore, brethren” (that I may warn you with better effect in the words of the apostle himself), “we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh; for if you live after the flesh you shall die; but if you, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.”Rom 8.12-13 I have said this to deter your free will from evil, and to exhort it to good by apostolic words. Yet you must not therefore glory in man—that is to say, in yourselves—rather than in the Lord, when you do not live after the flesh, but through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh. For in order that those to whom the apostle addressed this language might not exalt themselves—thinking that they were able to do such good works as these by their own spirit, and not by the Spirit of God—after saying to them, “If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live,” he at once added, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”Rom 8.14 Therefore, when you mortify the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit—that you may have life—glorify Him, praise Him, give thanks to Him by whose Spirit you are so led as to be able to do those things which show you to be the children of God; “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”