Fifth, nothing should be added to God’s Commandments.
Fifth, nothing should be added to God’s Commandments.
§ 89. (V) God commands us to add nothing to His Commandments (Deut. 4:2). Therefore it is wrong to add the counsels.
Bellarmine counters: “Nothing should be added to a commandment which would corrupt it, but something which perfects it is not [forbidden]. But now, the Commandments are not corrupted but are perfected by the counsels.”
We respond. Abolition is not an addition; therefore the prohibition of addition cannot be understood to mean a prohibition of corruption. As was shown elsewhere [On Actual Sins (Commonplace XIII), § 4], God considers as lawless not only works contrary to the Law but also ἐθελοθρησκεία, service thought up out of one’s own choice. Here must be assigned the rule regarding the true explanation of the divine Commandments given earlier [On the Law of God (Commonplace XV), § 53], and it must be carefully observed: wherever something is shown to be sin, there at the same time a virtue is commanded contrary to that sin, as well as all the virtues of the same type, along with their causes, occasions, and means of aid. Thus to the extent that the counsels of perfection contain some aid and assistance for the achievement of a necessary virtue, they must also have been prescribed by the Law. But to the extent that they prescribe some external exercises undertaken in proportion to the diversity of gifts so that one can be more free and less hindered for those things that have to do with true devotion, to that extent they do not hand down new worship or new merits, much less a sort of greater perfection than is required by the Law. Instead, they prescribe an indifferent [adiaphora] exercise to be observed with a free spirit such that, if one does not observe it, he does not sin. “I do not say this to you to lay any restraint upon you, but that you might adhere to the Lord without distraction” (1 Cor. 7:35). “If you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a maiden marries, she has not sinned” (v. 28). “Bodily training is of some value, but godliness has a promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8).