CHAPTER XI
was created both rational and just also shows that, if Adam had not sinned, then those propagated from this human nature would necessarily have been not only rational, but also just. For God, who created the first man without the means of parental generation, also creates those who are propagated through the first man's created nature. So if Adam had not sinned, then every man would have been rational and just at the same time--even as he was. But since
Adam was unwilling to be subject to the will of God, his reproductive nature (which remained in him) was no longer subject to his will as it would have been if he had not sinned. So he lost the grace which he could have kept for those who were going to be propagated from him; and all who are propagated by the working of the nature which Adam received are born under his obligation to make satisfaction. For human nature as a whole was in Adam, and no part of it was in anyone else; and by sinning without any necessity, human nature dishonored
God and could not make any satisfaction to God by itself. Therefore, Adam lost that grace which he received and which he could always have kept on be half of those who were going to be propagated from him; and for these descen dants he also contracted sin and its accompanying penalty--insofar as sin and its penalty are propagated in his descendants through the reproductive nature which was given to him.
CHAPTER XI
That Propagation From the Virgin Is Wot Subject to the Law and the Merits of Natural Propagation; and That There Are Three Courses of Things
Wow we must carefully consider whether this so-called inheritance and penalty of sin is justly transmitted to the man who was propagated frcm Adamthrough the Virgin. But it is certain that the reproductive nature which Adam received works only through the conjunction of a man and a woman. So it is
impossible to suppose that human nature is such that a man alone or a woman alone--simply by the working of his own nature and will--could beget offspring
For just as the clay of the earth had not received a nature or will by which to produce the first man (although the clay was that from which the first man was able to be made by God), so also a woman was not made from the rib of Adam nor was a man made from a woman alone by the working of human nature and will.
Rather, God, by His own power and will, made one man from clay, made another man from a woman alone, and made a woman from a man alone. For although noth ing is done except by the efficient or permitting will of God, nevertheless certain things are done by His power and will alone, certain other things are done by the created nature, and still other things by the will of the creature
But just as created nature can do nothing of itself except what God permits, so the will of the creature cannot do anything by itself except what created nature assists in or concedes to. For in the beginning, the will of God alone ma.de the natures of things, giving appropriate wills to various individuals, so that these natures and these wills might perform their work in the course of things in accordance with that order which God prescribed for them. More over, God creates many other things by means of the working of these natures and wills, when something is done by them which they could not at all have done in accordance with their appointed use and purpose.
For when the sea offers a dry path within itself to a people, or when the dead rise, or when water is suddenly changed into wine, or when the hearts of men are taught by the Holy Spirit certain things which they do not know either from themselves or from another creature, or when by the directing of grace alone evil wills are converted from their own impulses unto that which is beneficial, and when other things are done which neither the creature nor
its will might have done in its own natural way--these things are the work of God's will alone. Nature draws what is light upward and what is heavy down ward. Nature makes the earth bring forth countless plants and trees, and makes these bear fruit--and sometimes she does this by first using a human will which plants and cultivates the earth, and other times she does this without any working of a human will. And we know more from experience than from what we are taught that nature does many other such works. But things such as making a road, building, writing, speaking, and the like are thought of as works belonging to the will rather than to nature; for the will alone causes such things as these.
Therefore, if we carefully consider all the things which are done, we see that they occur either by the will of God alone, or by nature according to the power given to it by God, or by the will of a creature. Now, those things which are not done by created nature or by the will of a creature, but done by God alone, are miracles. Thus it appears that there are three courses of things, viz., the miraculous, the natural, and the voluntary. And indeed the miraculous is not subject to the other two or to their laws, but it freely rules over them; nor does it do violence to them when it seems to oppose them, since they have nothing except what they received from the miraculous, and since the miraculous has established them completely under itself. Therefore, like the propagation which brought forth a woman from a man alone, and like the creation of a man from clay, the propagation of a man from a virgin alone is neither natural nor voluntary, but miraculous. For this reason, it is clear that the propagation from the Virgin is not at all subject to the laws and merits of that propagation which the will and nature collaborate in effec ting. For in this collaboration, the will does one thing and nature does