PROLOGUE OF ST. FULGENTIUS, BISHOP OF RUSPE, TO THE THREE BOOKS ADDRESSED TO MONIMUS. 1. I give thanks to the Lord that you do not cease to bring forth good things out of the good treasure of your heart (Matt. xii, 35). And the gracious tongue that abounds in a good man discloses the purity of your heart. Though it overflows with the streams of eloquence divinely granted, yet I believe that not so much is expressed by words as I know to be contained in the inmost recesses of your heart. For, kindled with divine fire, you so continually share our sufferings that even those tribulations which, though they befell us, were nevertheless overcome with the Lord's help—these too you almost always so suffer on our behalf, that as often as you revolve them in your heart, so often are you in a manner compelled to suffer them.
See how great a good charity possesses, see how great a praise it holds before God and men, that while it grieves over what befalls the one it loves, by frequent remembrance it itself endures the more. This therefore remains, that what charity is wont to do, you may do continually for us. And what else is this than that you should always pray for us to Him in whom you purely love us? For charity ever prays for those it loves, since it fears even those things that are safe. Yet it fears not with that fear which it casts out—for perfect charity casts out fear (1 John iv, 18)—but with that fear which it is wont to have not unto fear, but unto love. It fears therefore not with a timid fear, but with a chaste one.
For it fears not with dread of crime, but with the strength of purity and the firmness of virtue. You further exact of me a debt, which, with the Lord's help, I promise to repay speedily. For I do not profess this debt in the way that your Maro recounts of a certain man, who confessed himself indeed to owe it, but denied that he could repay it; rather, I confess myself to owe that which I do not deny I am able to repay, but promise to do so. For He Himself gives me that whence I may repay, who gave that I should owe. For unless we had received from Him, we could not only not repay, but not even owe at all. For what do we owe one another except charity? Which indeed blessed Paul, speaking these things to the faithful, plainly shows: 'Owe no man anything, but to love one another' (Rom.
xiii, 8). But who would confess a debt, if he denied having received? Therefore, in the very thing which we say we owe, we assuredly show that we have received. For the blessed Apostle says: 'For what have you that you did not receive? And if you received, why do you glory, as though you had not received?' (1 Cor. iv, 7). For in another place too he testifies: 'Because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us' (Rom. v, 5). He therefore who gave us what by repaying we should owe, will Himself grant us the power by which we may repay what we owe. He then is the author of the debt, who is the author of the gift. For He deigned by His own bounty even to make Himself a debtor—not because, being in need, He received from anyone, but because, abounding, He bestowed liberally.
For, entrusting the half-dead man, set upon his own beast, to the innkeeper to be cared for, and giving two denarii, He so professes Himself a debtor as to say, 'Whatever you spend over and above, when I return, I will repay you' (Luke x, 35). But what is 'whatever you spend over and above,' except 'whatever more you receive from me'? For he too who spent over and above, in that he had received no precept but was giving counsel out of charity, professed that he had indeed obtained mercy. For he says: 'Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give counsel, as one that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful' (1 Cor. vii, 25). He therefore obtained mercy, not only that he might receive what to spend, but also that he might spend yet more.
Behold what manner of Lord is ours, that by giving He becomes a debtor, and the more He gives, the more it does not irk Him to be a debtor. For insofar as He bestows freely, so far is He found a debtor. For no one can have Him as a debtor except in that which He Himself has deigned to confer by free bounty. Therefore ask Him continually on my behalf, that He may bestow on me the power of repaying the debt—He who granted that in Him I should owe you the free servitude of charity. For that I may truly confess to your heart—which is my own heart—the whole matter, since I can hide nothing from your heart any more than from my own: it was this consideration that procured for me the slowness in repaying the debt.
Since I was compelled to reply to the empty babblings of a certain heretic, who not only did not hesitate to assail my name under the brand of the Photinian error, but even wished to turn against me the sayings of Saints Augustine and Jerome, as though contrary to my profession. Whose name I have for now deferred to disclose in this letter, but you can doubtless yourself recall it. For while you were staying with us there at Carthage, his sayings were brought to me, and, if I recall rightly, they came also to your knowledge; for nothing could I read while you were there, which I could not offer to you to be reviewed. Those same little books, therefore, if the Lord will, I shall speedily send to your charity.
And I do not doubt that you will deign patiently to bear my slowness in your debt. For I know how greatly you are delighted, and how greatly you yourself ever urge us, that we, with the Lord's help, should not be loath to reply to heretics. BOOK ONE, ON THE TWOFOLD PREDESTINATION OF GOD, THE ONE OF THE GOOD UNTO GLORY, THE OTHER OF THE WICKED UNTO PUNISHMENT. CHAPTER ONE. God inspires us to seek Him, and is found by those who seek. 3. Your letter, dearest son Monimus, as much as it displays the delightful sincerity of your mind and the praiseworthy ardor of your spiritual zeal, so much does it seem, with querulous kindness, to reproach the slowness of my response.
As though I seem to love you less than I ought, in that I have not taken care to respond speedily to your inquiries. But believe me, that just as in the charity of Christ your person is by no means despised in my heart, so my response was delayed not by will, but by the diversity of occupations. Yet nonetheless, amid the very occupations which I am compelled unwillingly to endure, I rejoice with your zeal as much as I am delighted by your charity.
All the more do I embrace the holy purpose of your eagerness, in that, like a truly spiritual merchant pursuing the gains of the inner man and desiring more and more to enlarge the profits of heavenly wares, you first add to the debt you demand of me a further heaping-up through the interest of your questions—so that this very necessity of my slowness may serve the increase of your advantages. Accordingly, I trust in the mercy of our God, that if anything of this inquiry and disputation is not granted me by the work, according to my merit, it will be granted me for the sake of your desire.
For God will in no way allow your inquiry to be defrauded of the effect of discovery—He who kindled you spiritually to inquire—since His faithful promise can by no reasoning be made void, saying: 'Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you' (Luke xi, 9). The inward Master, therefore, from whom we receive the aid of heavenly teaching, not only opens the secrets of His discourses to us as we inquire, but that we may even inquire, He Himself freely inspires the affection. For neither can we hunger for that bread which came down from heaven (John vi, 33), unless the hunger be given by Him to us who are without appetite—He who deigns to give Himself for the filling of the hungry.
From Him also comes it that we thirsty ones run to the fountain, who gives Himself to us that we may drink. He therefore is to be praised in the grace of both gifts: both when He rouses us, sleeping, to seek Him, and when He grants Himself to be found by us who seek. And He is assuredly in no way found, unless He Himself awakens us that He may be sought. CHAPTER II. On the same argument. Turning over your writings, therefore, as though they were my own bonds, that I might learn from them of how many, or of what, questions I was your debtor, I was able to find, for the present, two letters. One containing the words of Saint Augustine, which he is known to have set down, among other things, in his book on the Perfection of Man's Righteousness, concerning those who are predestined to destruction.
To which I seem to have found immediately subjoined a question—that is, concerning the sacrifice which some think is offered to the Father alone. But in the other letter I found an inquiry placed: What is it that the Apostle was able to spend over and above the two denarii which he received? Since, then, I found only these two letters, I straightway remembered also a third, which was not presented to me by the notary, in which I recall one question is contained concerning the Holy Spirit—namely, why He is asked to be sent by the Father to consecrate the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Lord. These, then, for the present, are four questions, of which three are from your two letters, but one I have recalled at the prompting of memory. And if perchance there are others,
which you sent us to be resolved, and you do not find them set down or resolved in this work, I beg that you may not reduce it to contempt or disdain, but patiently pardon it as forgetfulness; especially since that concerning the Holy Spirit, which I recalled even though the letter was not found, I could not pass over in silence. But since you without doubt remember all of them (if perchance there are any), let it not irk you that I be reminded by your writing back. And I hope that, insofar as the Lord shall help, our response will follow, if it be supported by the aid of your preceding prayer. CHAPTER III. The first question, on predestination. The words of Monimus on the twin predestination.
About to seek understanding of the first question, therefore, in the name of Him of whom it is written that 'the Lord gives wisdom, and from His face come knowledge and understanding' (Prov. ii, 6), I have judged it more fitting and convenient to turn over both your own words and those of the blessed Augustine which you set down in your letter: so that, these being reread, both the intention and the solution of the question may more easily be recognized. 'As I was reading,' you say, 'the book on the Perfection of Man's Righteousness, on reconsidering the testimony of the prophet in its order, I with cautious hearing little by little went slowly back over the place where he says: There is none that does good, no, not up to one' (Ps. xiii, 3).
And without any cloud, without any doubt, that most truthful interpreter himself expressed that there is such a kind of men, which does not do good—that kind assuredly predestined to destruction. And, that your discourse might be supported by the eloquence of the aforesaid holy man, subjoining the same words which were spoken by the blessed Augustine (On the Perfection of Righteousness, ch. 13): 'For,' you say, 'the same most glorious Augustine says: We ought here to understand this said of that good of which he there says: God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there be any that understands, or seeks after God' (Ps. xiii, 2).
'This good, therefore, which is to seek God, there was none that did it, there was none up to one, but in that kind of men which is predestined to destruction.' Here, determining the sayings of Saint Augustine, and directing the intention of your letter to me, you say that I already understand why you again inculcate these things—namely, that when I often resisted you, saying that predestination is spoken not only in the good, but also in the evil, while you said you had read predestination even unto evil, I myself, teaching, would say that another predestination can be spoken unto the due penalty, not unto the doing of evil. Which you also, as you wrote, confirm. Yet you assert that you know what I would here reply, to defend my opinion—that is, that 'destruction' is spoken of nothing but death.
And you add that meanwhile you had read this, and had even asserted that the people were predestined to destruction. Then you admonish me to consider the discourse of that very passage, and that, as a teacher of my disciples, not as an asserter of my own propositions, I should make you know what is to be followed. CHAPTER IV. The author's modest and theological invocation. I indeed, dearest one, insofar as, by the Lord bestowing His free grace, I am able to recognize the measure of my own littleness, set under that one Lord and Master, in His school, do not aspire to be called the master or teacher of my brethren, whose fellow-disciple in the truth I ever desire to be.
Wherefore I do not cease to ask of that true Lord and Master of ours, that He would deign to teach me those things—whether through the utterances of His Scriptures, or through the discourse of my brethren and fellow-disciples, or even through the inward and sweeter teaching of His inspiration (where, without the sounds of words and without the elements of letters, truth speaks the more sweetly the more secretly)—that He would deign to teach me those things, so that I may so propound them, so assert them, that in my propositions and assertions I may ever cleave to the truth (which neither deceives nor is deceived), and ever be found obedient and consenting.
For that I may be able to obey and consent to the truth, the truth itself illumines, itself helps, itself confirms; from it I ask to be taught the many things I do not know, from which I have received the few things I do know. I beseech it that, by mercy going before and following after, it may teach me whatever things salutary to be known I do not know; may keep me in those things which I truly know; may correct me in those in which, as a man, I am deceived; may confirm me in those true things in which I waver; and may snatch me from things false and harmful—that in my thoughts and words it may find what it salutarily grants, and may cause those things to proceed from my mouth which are first of all pleasing before itself, and so become acceptable to all the faithful. CHAPTER V.
Response to the first question, how some are predestined to destruction. The death of sinners is not predestined by God. Insofar, therefore, as, by the truth itself (which is the true light) illumining my darkness (Ps. xvii, 29), the faculty of understanding has thus far been granted me in the scrutiny of this question, I think that nothing else is to be understood in that discourse of Saint Augustine, in which he affirms that certain persons are predestined to destruction, except unto the destruction of punishment, not of fault; nor unto the evil which they unjustly commit, but unto the torment which they will most justly suffer;
nor unto the sin by which they either do not receive, or lose, the benefit of the first resurrection, but unto the torment which their own iniquity wickedly begets for them and the divine equity rightly requites; nor unto the first death of the soul, in which little children are born, or into which (as the blessed James says) the criminous fall, drawn away and enticed by their own concupiscence (James i, 14), but unto the second death, which they must needs suffer, the most just Judge requiting—whether those who depart from the world before receiving the grace of baptism, or those who, receiving the grace of God in vain (2 Cor.
vi, 1) after receiving baptism, who prefer, unto the end of the present life, to be slaves of sin, and are unwilling, while it is the acceptable time and the day of salvation, to be converted from their evil way, that they may live; and, ignorant that the goodness of God leads them to repentance, they themselves, according to their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up to themselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God (Rom. ii, 4, 5). Of that death, therefore, which sinners have summoned to themselves by hands and words, and, deeming it a friend, have wasted away toward it, it is said: 'Do not court death in the error of your life, neither procure the destruction of your souls, for God made not death, neither has He pleasure in the destruction of the living' (Wis. i, 12-13).
And in another place it is said of this death: 'But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world. And they follow him that are of his portion' (Wis. ii, 24-25). That we might recognize this death to be alien from the work and predestination of God, God Himself thus speaks through the prophet: 'Turn, and turn yourselves away from all your impieties, and they shall not be to you unto the punishment of iniquity. Cast away from you all your iniquities, which you have wickedly done against me, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. And why will you die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of him that dies, but that he should turn from his evil way, and his soul should live' (Ezek. xviii, 30-32).
This is the death of impiety, which God did not make, which entered into the world through the devil. In this they follow him who are of his portion. CHAPTER VI. God requites this death with a twofold death. The death of the soul in hell. To this one death, which the sinner summoned to himself unjustly by longing, through contempt of the divine command, God, judging justly, requites a twofold death; that is, the first in the separation of soul and body, the second in the eternal torturing of soul and body. And through this the first, whereby, the soul departing, the flesh alone dies; but the second, when the soul, returning into the flesh, is tortured in the same and with the same flesh in which it sinned;
so that with that with which it shared the death of sin, which the goodness of God forbade to man, it may share the death of punishment, which the divine justice prepared for the sinner. Of this death our Savior says: 'Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell' (Matt. x, 28). That the wicked, therefore, perish before hell, is not of the divine work, but of the human. But that they are to perish in hell, this the equity of God brings about, to whom no iniquity of the sinner is pleasing. For 'he who loves iniquity hates his own soul' (Ps. x, 6). And John says: 'Because everyone who commits sin commits also iniquity;
and sin is iniquity' (1 John iii, 4). And God says through the prophet: 'For the soul that sins, the same shall die' (Ezek. xviii, 4). But concerning the Son of God, John says: 'We know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin' (1 John iii, 5). As, therefore, sin is not in Him, so sin is not from Him. But what is not from Him is assuredly not His work. And what is never in His work was never in His predestination. CHAPTER VII. How the wicked are predestined by God, not unto guilt, but unto punishment. God forestalls those to be saved, and finds those to be damned.
The wicked, therefore, are not predestined to this, that they do evil, drawn away and enticed by their own concupiscence, but to this, that they justly suffer against their will. For by the name of predestination there is not expressed some coercive necessity of the human will, but the merciful and just everlasting disposition of the future divine work is proclaimed. 'Unto God,' therefore, 'mercy and judgment sing' (Ps. c, 1), O Church, whose work this is in man: that by the hidden—yet not unjust—counsel of His will, He may either bestow gratuitous mercy on the wretched, or repay due justice to the unjust. Nay, either mercifully to remit to the debtor what He could justly exact if He willed, or justly to exact His own with interest (Matt.
xxv, 27), and repay to the wicked debtor what is owed to his iniquities. And thus, either He forestalls the one utterly unworthy of mercy, or He finds the other worthy of wrath. For He Himself freely gives grace to the unworthy, by which the ungodly, being justified, may be enlightened with the gift of a good will and the capacity for good action, so that by preceding mercy he may begin to will the good, and by following mercy he may be able to do the good which he wills. And both of these, by predestining, God prepared in that unchangeable will, in which He so disposed the future effect of the man to be renewed, that His will in the new work cannot be new. CHAPTER VIII. The grace of God both initiates man's merit unto righteousness and consummates it unto glory.
How the will is prepared by the Lord. He also gives grace to the worthy in the requital of the eternal reward: namely, that whether when the just One piously justifies the ungodly (since concerning Him the Apostle says, 'That He might be just, and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus,' Rom. iii, 26), or when the merciful One justly glorifies the just (since 'whom He justified, them He also glorified,' Rom. viii, 30), it may be the same operation of grace, which both initiates man's good merit unto righteousness and consummates it unto glory.
First He begins the good will in man; then He assists that same will once begun, so that the same will may both be good by the divine gift and be able, by the divine help, to overcome evil concupiscence, and so that, with God bringing it to perfection, that will may afterward become such that it can no longer harbor evil concupiscence. And thus in the present life, by the help of grace, it does not yield to its weakness, while in the life to come, by the benefit of grace, it will have no weakness at all. Now it is continually restored by the succor of the remedy, but then it will truly enjoy the eternal fullness of health. And these things God does, just as He has always held them in predestination, so by grace He accomplishes them exactly as He had predestined.
And so the acknowledgment of that very predestination is conveyed when Scripture says: And the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov. VIII, 35, according to the Septuagint). Now it is called prepared for no other reason than that it is foretold as something to be given. For by Him from whom it is prepared through His everlasting goodness, by that same One it is given through undeserved grace. This the Lord Himself attests through the prophecy of Ezekiel, saying: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and my Spirit I will put within you. And I will cause you to walk in my justifications and to observe my judgments and to do them (Ezek. XXXVI, 26).
God therefore gives a new heart, that we may walk in His justifications, which pertains to the beginning of a good will. He also gives that we may observe and do His judgments, which pertains to the effect of good working. CHAPTER IX. Both the will and the capacity for good work are from God. In God we shall do valor, that is, the work of virtue. He who does the truth comes to the light. God Himself works every good work in us. Whence we recognize that it is of God both that we should will to do good and that we should be able to do good. With this understanding David wholly agrees, thus showing that the grace of willing well is bestowed by the directing of the divine bounty: By the Lord shall the steps of a man be directed, and He shall will his way (Ps. XXXVI, 23).
He testifies also that good work is done only by God in us, and in God by us, saying: Confirm this, O God, which Thou hast wrought in us (Ps. LXVII, 29). And in another place: In God we shall do valor (Ps. LIX, 14), that is, the work of virtue. Here he said 'valor is done' in place of the work of virtue, just as John said 'righteousness is done' in place of the work of righteousness. For he says: He who does righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous (1 John III, 7). Paul too declares that God's will is wrought in us as our desire, saying: Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, in the blood of the eternal testament, our Lord Jesus, fit you in every good thing, that you may do His will (Heb. XIII, 20).
But what is it to do His will, except to do the works which His will inspires in us and works within us? We find something of this kind also in the sayings of our very Redeemer, when He speaks of truth being done, in place of the work of truth. For thus He speaks: Everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works be reproved. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are wrought in God (John III, 20). Now this we do in God: that which, when God works it in us, is granted to us to do. This is plainly shown in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, when it had been said of God: Fit you in every good thing, that you may do His will, there immediately follows:
Working in you what is pleasing in His sight (Heb. XIII, 21). Every work, therefore, which is done by us in God, God works in us. For from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things (Rom. XI, 36). From Him, therefore, is both the good will and the good working. This the Teacher of the Gentiles affirms in these words: For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will (Phil. II, 13). Therefore, just as Solomon says that the will is prepared by the Lord, so too Paul asserts that our good works have been prepared by the Lord, that is, arranged in predestination. And so he says: By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God. Not of works, that no one may boast;
for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has prepared that we should walk in them (Eph. II, 8). Just as, therefore, the will by which we would will the good has been prepared by the Lord through predestination, so also God has prepared good works, that we should walk in them. CHAPTER X. Not only the will, but also good work and eternal life, are prepared by God through predestination. Let us also consider eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, divinely prepared by faith for the faithful. For Christ Himself shows that He will say to those on His right: Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matt. XXV, 34). But this too is a work of grace.