Free Will 24
tyranny, yet guilty of the debt of a multitude of sins." "Presently upon Christ's descension," says Cosarius, Homil. 3, de Paschate, "that eternal night of hell had morning, the noise of the mourners was silent, the huge weights of the chains were laid off, and the bands of the damned fell away all broken."
8. Other some will have them in a quiet repose without all molestation. So will Jerome have them, Ad Paulam, epist. 25, cap. 3, and Augustine, De genes. ad lit., lib. 12, cap. 33. So that Abraham, although he was in that place of repose, yet is said to have been in hell with Lazarus.
Free Will 1. Some of the fathers, speaking of free will, in some places do mean of the freedom which was in our nature before our fall, or of the freedom of glory. So means August., Hypognost. 3 (or whosoever was the author of that book), when he says, "Unto Adam was that spoken,
Eccles. 15, if thou wilt keep my commandments they shall keep thee."
2. Other some things are spoken of the natural freedom of our will from necessity, from which it cannot but be free. And in this sense, they say that we have a will absolutely free in all things, that is, an understanding mind and a will whereby we assent unto or dissent from our judgment, by which that which we do, we do it wittingly and willingly, not compelled. Gregory Arim., lib. 2, dist. 29, in fine, says, "It is sufficient to make a thing voluntary if it be done by him that knows and is willing." "The soul has free will," says Cyril,
Catechis. 4., "The devil may stir it up unto sin but he cannot constrain it against the will." "God made us of a free consent," says
Jerome, in Iovinian, lib. 4, "neither are we forced by necessity either to virtue or vice." And these speak of the lib.ty we have in reasonable
and sensible things. So does Augustine, de perfect. justit. contra Caelestium, and Caelestius, objecting that of Saint Paul, faciat quod vult, "As though," says he, "it was a great matter to desire to wed, where the disputation is earnest concerning the assistance of God's mercy." "Neither let a man think," says the author in Ambrose's words, De vocat. Gent., lib. 1, cap. 3, "because he is drawn on by the Spirit of God, that he has not free will, for he lost not that when he yielded himself in will unto the devil, by whom indeed the judgment of his will was depraved, but not utterly taken away." So says
Euthymius, in Luc., 15, cap., of the prodigal son: "He asked that part of the goods which fell unto him, that is, free will; as if he should say, urge me not necessarily to serve, for I have free will." So Bernard, De grat. et lib. arbit, says, "Seeing then that consummation or perfection in glory must be wrought upon us, or even in us, but not of ourselves, and that our creation was wrought, and that without us, there is only reformation, which after a sort is wrought with us by reason of our voluntary consent, that shall be reckoned to our desert."
3. Some things also are spoken of free will as of a good belonging to natural life, or an external moral good, or of outward discipline. And this manner of speaking the author of the book in Augustine called
Hypognostic uses, lib. 3: "He is rightly said to be but half alive," says he, "for he had his vital motion, that is, his free will wounded." And so Gregory of Arimin., 2 dist. 26, and after him, Cassalius, de quadripartita Justitia, lib. 1, do speak of goodness considered in the kind, object, and office, not of good from all circumstances.
4. Some of their sayings hereof are legal, in that they show not what we can do but what we cannot do through sin, and what we ought to do in duty. "The Pelagians," says Augustine, De grat. & lib. arbit, cap.
16, "think themselves great scholars when they object that God would not command what He knows impossible to be kept; who knows not
that? But therefore, He commands us some things which we cannot do because we should know what we ought to beg of Him."
5. Others are meant of the will being freed, and therefore show what our will may do in a work, truly good not of itself and its own natural power, but what it can do by grace.
6. Most of the fathers correct their own unfit speeches of free will (but chiefly Augustine). For indeed almost all of them speak contraries, so that none can tell their positive doctrines. 1.
Sometimes they extol human power too much, and that first because if they should directly have affirmed the weakness of the will, the philosophers might have scorned them. 2. Because they would not give the reins unto negligence. And sometimes they beat down the lib.ty of will on the other side. Chrysostom often gives too much to the power of the will after the fall, and yet sometimes corrects himself. "A man before he sins," says he, Sermon 1, de Adventu., "has free will to choose whether he will yield to the devil or no; but when he has once taken that subjection upon him by sin, then he is no more at his own command." "You have nothing," says Basil, Sermon de humilit., "left you, oh man, to be proud of, whose glory and hope should be to mortify all your own affections, and seek the life to come in Christ, whose first fruits we having reaped, do owe our life and all we are unto the gift and grace of God. For it is He that gives us both to will and to do according to His good pleasure."
7. The fathers before Pelagius, while the controversies of free will were not stirred up, spoke thereof very securely, like as Pelagius did chiefly; they that opposed the Marcionites, Valentinians, or the Manichees, with whom, while they contend about the heresy of the necessity of all things and of all events; they miss the way a little in giving too much to free will and too little unto grace, at least in show.
"There were naught of any worth in man," says Justin (Apolog. 1), "unless he had an equal power to turn unto what part he lists." "God does not force any," says Irenaeus (lib. 4, cap. 71), "but is always well meaning, and therefore He counsels all men unto good. But He has given man a free election, even as well as the angels." "We are all of one nature," says the same father (cap. 72), "able to keep good, and so to work, and able to lose good, and not to work in it." "There should no law have been given," says Tertullian (contra Marcion, lib.
2), "unto him that has not the due keeping of the law in his own power. And the same freedom of will (which was in Adam) makes us victors of the same devil."
"It is our part to begin," says Jerome (contra Pelagium, lib. 2, cap. 1), "and God's to perfect; we must do what we can, he will fulfill what we cannot." "Unless the patriarch," says Chrysostom (in Genes., homily
42), "had first done his part, he had not obtained so great things of God. And therefore, mark not only this, but in all things else, how first he shows the greatness of his virtue, and so thereby deserves
God's assistance." "And again" (homil. 17, in Joan.), "let us here observe that God in His blessings to us does not prevent our wills, but it must begin in ourselves. And when He sees our minds prompt and ready to receive grace, then He gives us many occasions of salvation." "I said," says Augustine (de predest. Sanct., lib. primo, cap. tertio), "that it lives in us to believe and to will, and in God to give the power of working well unto the believing and willing." "To propound or begin a good work," says Hesichius (in Levit., lib. 2, cap.
7), "is in our power, but to perfect and finish it according to the precept is only in God's grace." After Pelagius was risen up,
Cassianus held with him concerning free will (as Prosper says of him, contra Collatorem), for in one of his collations (Collatio 13, cap. 11), he affirms that the grace of God sometimes prevents us, and sometimes is prevented by us. So held Faustus Rhegiensis.
8. Augustine, after Pelagius was risen, in all his last writings, never acknowledges either the exercise or the active power of free will in working true good, or in the first conversion of a sinner. "Why do we presume so much," says he (De natura & grat., cap. 36), "of the power of nature? It is wounded, maimed, vexed, and lost. Let us confess it freely, and not defend it falsely. Wherefore let us seek the grace of God, not to inform, but to reform it thereby." And in the Hypognost. 3, cap. primo, "It is said, that by sin man did lose both the ability of goodness and the goodness of possibility." "The will," says Augustine in another place, De perfect. justit., "being overcome by sin, nature has lost her lib.ty." And again, de spirit. & lit., cap. tertio, "Free will has not any power but unto sin, if the way of truth be unknown; and when that which is to be done begins to appear, unless also it delight, and be beloved, there is no doing, no undertaking, no well living." "We are therefore willing, but God is He that works this willingness in us. And we work, but God gives us this ability to work according unto His good pleasure," Augustine, De bono perseverantia, cap. 11. "It is certain that we are willing when we are so, but it is He that makes us so, of whom it is said, it is God that works this will in us. It is certain that we work when we do so, but it is He that gives us this working power, by giving our will most efficient power, as if He said, I will cause you work" (Augustine, De grat. & lib. arbit., cap. 16). "Unless He first work us to be willing, and then work with us being willing, we shall never bring to pass any good work. We must confess that we have free will both to good and evil, but in doing evil every man just and unjust is free (in choice); but in doing good, none can be free (in will and act) unless he be freed by Him that said, 'If the Son free you, you are truly freed'"
(Augustine, De corrept. & grat., cap. primo). "Holy thoughts, good purposes, godly counsels, and all motions of a good will are from God: because by Him we are able to do some good, without whom we can do nothing at all," author de Dog. Eccles., cap. 17. "We lost our
free election to love God by the greatness of the first sin" (Epist. 107).
"Lib.ty without grace is no lib.ty, but contumacy" (idem, Epistol. 89, ad Hilar). "Man, in his creation, had great power of free-will given him, but in his fall he lost it" (idem de verb. Apost., Sermon 2). And you shall very often find these words in Augustine, our bound will, captived, destroyed, lost, etc.
Of this opinion of Augustine was Prosper also. "Infidelity," says he, contra Collatorem, cap. 21, "took away our faith, bondage took away our lib.ty, neither can any part of virtue remain there, where such a crew of vices have broke in." "Adam," says Fulgentius, de Incar. & gra., cap. 13, "being created without necessity of sinning, when he lost his soul's health in offending God, lost utterly even the power of thinking of all divine things." Again, in another place, cap. 12, "The power of thinking good thoughts, being lost in the first man, was recovered in the second." "We believe," says Maxentius, de Fide, cap.
32, "that our free natural will has power in nothing but in discerning and desiring the worldly and carnal things only, which seem not glorious before God, though before men perhaps they do. But in things belonging to salvation, it can neither think of them, choose, desire, nor finish them without the infusion and operation of the Spirit of God." And he adds: "To will and to perform is God's gift."
Bernard teaches that it is one thing to choose, and another to choose good. "To will," quotes he, de grat. & lib.o arbit., "is in us by free will, but not to perform our will. I say not to will either good or evil, but only to will, for to will good is increase (of grace he means), and to will evil is defect., Free will makes us willing, but grace makes us well willing. From free will we have power to will, and to will well comes from grace."
9) Augustine in divers places plainly affirms all the works of the unfaithful to be sins (de nupt. & concup., lib. primo, cap. tertio; in
Juli., lib. 4, cap. 3; de Civit. Dei, lib. 5, cap. 19 and lib. 19, cap. 25; in Psal. 31, in praefat.). "Our free will," says he (contr. 2 Epist. Pelag., lib. 3, cap. 8), "being now captivated, can do nothing but sin." So Jerome (in Galat. c. 3): "Without Christ all virtue is sin." And Gregory, very rightly (Moral., lib. 2, cap. 33): "The sons do feast in the eldest brother's house, when all other virtues are entertained in faith, which, if it be not the first begotten in our heart, all the rest can never be good, though they seem never so well." "It is through the gift of God, whensoever we decline from sin," says the Council of Arausic. But Stapleton (De Justific., lib. 2, cap. vitimo) scourges this doctrine, and sticks not to surmise that Augustine went a little beyond his bounds in this controversy with Pelagius. But other modern writers holding with Augustine do flatly deny that a man by the power of nature can discern or distinguish of a moral good. So holds Gregory of Arimin. (in 2 distinct. 26, quest. 1, art. 2, and 2 distinct. 29, quest. 1, artic. 2); Capreolus (in 2 distinct. 28, quest. 1, art. 3); Cassalius (de quadrip. justit., lib.. 1, cap. 15 and 32, etc.).
Also, these deny that a man without faith, and the especial help thereof, by nature's power, can do a good moral work, so as there be no sin in the action or work. Both Gregory of Ariminium and Caprelius (in 2 dist. 28) hold this. But Cassalius (de quadrip. justit., lib. 1, cap. 36) both teaches and defends that the fathers were of this mind. This also is Marsilius's opinion (in 1 quest. 20). Bellarmine indeed confesses that Scotus, Durandus, and Biel (upon the 28th
Distinction of Lombard's second book) have perhaps written more freely than is behooveful. Sixtus Senensis says (Praefat. in lib. 5,
Biblioth.) that Augustine sometimes gives but too little unto man's free will, and Chrysostom, on the contrary, seems to extol it as much beyond the mean. Bradwardine (in his book De causa Dei, against Pelagius, lib. 3, cap. 4) teaches that free will, being tempted, cannot overcome any temptation by itself, without the assistance and grace of God. And this also in another place (cap. 5, ibid.): "With what
grace of the creation soever it be upheld, yet without some special grace of God, it cannot conquer any temptation at all." And again (c.
6, ibid.), that "That special help of God is God's invincible will."
10. The fathers say that our will is assisted by God according as we sometimes say, such a man helped me to do this, when as he did all, and I nothing.
11. The fathers hold a possibility of turning, whereby man's mind and will may by God's ordinary dispensation be turned to receive grace, when they are prevented and helped by the Holy Spirit. "To be able to have faith and charity," says Augustine (de praedest. Sanct. c. 5),
"is in man's nature." And again (contra Julian, lib. 2), "Man's nature is capable of justification by the grace of the Holy Spirit." Gregory of Arimin unto that of Augustine: "There is nothing so much in man's power as to will," he says in lib. 2, dist. 28. "We may say that it is in our power not only to will or choose bad things, but also good things, but with this difference: we may use our election unto evil without God's especial help, but unto good, if He do not chiefly assist us, we cannot." "It is in man's power," says Augustine, Retract., lib. 1, cap.
22, "to change his bad will into better, but this power is none at all until God give it." And ibid., cap. 23: "We may will to believe, it is true, but with the same condition. They are both from Him (viz. to will and to believe) because He prepares our will. And both from us, because they be not done against our wills." And in this sense are many sayings of Saint Augustine to be understood. For he speaks of the passive possibility, which belongs to the matter, not of the active, belonging to the form, which is absent before the conversion, both according to the first and second act.
12. The fathers acknowledge a cooperation with the grace of God, even natural, in respect of the faculties of the understanding and will,