Not unto sin, which man began not from divine predestination but from his own will, by evil coveting, and completed by evil acting; for concupiscence, having conceived, brought forth sin, and sin when it was consummated begot death (James 1:15). Therefore the unrighteous are not predestined to the first death of the soul, but they are predestined to the second, that is, to the pool of fire and brimstone. Of which blessed John says: And the devil who deceived them was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone (Rev. 20:9). And in another place: And death and hell were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the pool of fire (Rev. 20:14). Again he says:
But for the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and the unchaste and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their portion shall be in the burning pool and brimstone, which is the second death (Rev. 21:8). He calls that the second death which follows from the sentence of the just Judge, not that which went before in the evil concupiscence of the sinner. By which death the Savior declared certain men to be dead, saying: Let the dead bury their own dead (Matt. 8:22). And the Apostle concerning the widow: But she that liveth in pleasures is dead while she liveth (1 Tim. 5:6). To the Ephesians also he speaks thus:
And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of unbelief, among whom also we all had our conversation in time past, in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of our thoughts; and we were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His exceeding great charity wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (Eph. 2:1-5). Concerning this death by which man is dead in sins, God says:
I desire not the death of him that dies, but that he should turn from his evil way and his soul should live (Ezek. 18:32). But how can it be believed that God predestined man to the death of sin, which He Himself testifies He does not will? Therefore this death of the dying man is his own evil way, which, because it is evil, is unknown to God. For it is written: For the Lord knows the ways that are on the right hand, but those that are on the left are perverse (Prov. 4:27). Therefore the ways which God made He knows; those which He did not make He destroys, because He does not know them. Whence it is written: The Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the path of the ungodly shall perish (Ps. 1:6).
He therefore who knows all things before they come to pass, and whose eyes in every place behold the good and the evil, whose countenance also is upon them that do evil things, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth (Ps. 33:17), does not know the evil way for this reason: not because anything in the works of men escapes His knowledge, but because He did not make the death of the dying man; yet He justly requites death to the dead man. Therefore the first death of the soul, which man brought upon himself, is the cause of the second death; and the second death, which God repaid to man, is the penalty of the first death.
And because man, being unrighteous, brought this death upon himself unjustly, he received that other death justly from the just Judge, so that, because in this death the improvident sinner willingly sows the seed of iniquity, in that death he unwillingly reaps the fruit of punishment: For he who sows in his own flesh, of the flesh shall reap corruption; but he who sows in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting (Gal. 6:8). But he who sows in the spirit, and of the spirit shall reap life everlasting, has from God the gift both of the harvest and of the seed. Which we have learned on Paul's testimony, for thus he says: But He who gives seed to the sower will also furnish bread to eat, and will multiply your seed, and increase the growth of the fruits of your righteousness (2 Cor. 9:10).
But he who sows in the flesh, and of the flesh shall reap corruption, will therefore not rejoice in the harvest, because he had not God but himself as the author in the seed. Thus indeed God foreknew as future all the sins of men in sinners; and because He Himself did not predestine them to be committed, He justly predestined them to be punished by judgment. Which you will surely recognize even in those very words of Saint Augustine that you inserted into your letter, if you consider them, who after saying: 'This good, then, which is to seek after God, there was none that did it, no not one (Ps. 14:3),' straightway continued and added, speaking of that kind which is predestined to perdition, saying:
'For upon this the foreknowledge of God looked, and pronounced its sentence.' Assuredly by these words he has shown quite plainly that God saw the sins of men by His foreknowledge, upon which He dictated the sentence by predestination. For what else ought we to understand in this pronouncing of God's sentence, than the punishment prepared for the sinner? And he is justly predestined to punishment by divine equity who is foreknown as a sinner by divine knowledge; inasmuch as he, of his own will, was going to commit the iniquity to which he was not predestined by God. So that in him in whom God's foreknowledge saw a future unjust work, for him He might prepare a just punishment through the sentence of predestination. CHAPTER XXVIII. It is confirmed from Saint [Augustine].
[From] Augustine, that the cause of no human fault is to be referred to God. Although, then, you yourself and others like you, by your zeal in reading or your quickness in understanding, may most easily recognize from this passage of Saint Augustine's words which you placed in your letter what the catholic understanding holds concerning those whom we hear to be predestined to perdition, nevertheless, lest any of the slower sort should think this one passage insufficient for them in this question, I have inserted certain things from other books of Saint Augustine also, in which he taught that the sole cause of human iniquity is pride, and that men are predestined by God not to sinning, but to damnation; and that the cause of their not being helped by God lies in themselves, not in God.
Thus in the second book On the Baptism of Infants, writing to Marcellinus, among other things he says thus (chap. 17): 'Ignorance therefore and weakness are vices which impede the will, so that it is not moved to do a good work or to abstain from an evil work. But that what lay hidden should become known, and what did not delight should become sweet, belongs to the grace of God, which helps the wills of men; and that they are not helped—the cause of this likewise lies in themselves, not in God, whether they be predestined to be damned on account of the iniquity of pride, or to be judged and instructed contrary to that very pride, if they are children of mercy.' Here immediately Saint Augustine subjoined the testimony of the prophet, saying:
'Whence Jeremiah, when he had said, I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, neither is it in a man to walk and to direct his steps (Jer. 10:23), immediately subjoined, Correct me, O Lord, but yet in judgment, and not in Thy fury. As if he said: I know it pertains to my correction that I am less helped by Thee, so that my steps may be perfectly directed. Nevertheless, for this very reason do not deal with me as in the fury with which Thou hast determined to condemn the wicked, but as in the judgment with which Thou teachest Thine own not to be proud. Whence it is said elsewhere: And Thy judgments will help me (Ps. 119:175).' And so, instructing the aforesaid Marcellinus with such teaching, Saint Augustine goes on and says:
'Therefore refer the cause of no human fault to God, for the cause of all human vices is pride.' In these words of Saint Augustine, consider, I beg you, my dearest friend. First, that the cause of men's not being helped by God is said to lie in themselves, not in God. Next, that they are said to be predestined to be damned on account of the iniquity of pride, which pertains to judgment, not to be depraved, which pertains to sin. Third, consider also that he admonishes that the cause of no human fault is to be referred to God, because, if any iniquity of the sinner is believed to be predestined by God, the cause of that iniquity would be placed in the divine predestination.
How impious and how contrary to the Christian faith this is, I think escapes no Christian. In another place of the same book also (chap. 19), the aforementioned Saint Augustine says thus: 'For to be lifted up into pride belongs to the proper will of men, not to the work of God. For God neither compels nor helps them to this.' CHAPTER XXIX. Predestination cannot exist without God's foreknowledge, but well the reverse. In sins, it is not the work of God, but His judgment.
And that our assertion may be supported by a clearer proof of his words, we must set down something from the book which he wrote On the Predestination of the Saints, in which he more plainly shows that foreknowledge can exist without predestination, but predestination cannot exist without foreknowledge; and that God foreknew even those things which He Himself does not do, that is, sins. In the aforementioned book, then, this is the opinion of the same blessed Augustine (Book I, chap. 10): 'Predestination is that which cannot exist without foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can exist without predestination. For by predestination God foreknew those things which He Himself was going to do, whence it is said: He made the things that are to come.
But He is able to foreknow even those things which He Himself does not do, such as any sins whatever. For although there are certain things which are so sins that they are also the penalties of sins—whence it is said: God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting (Rom. 1:28)—there it is not God's sin, but His judgment.' I think it is clearly shown in these words of blessed Augustine that God foreknew and predestined His own good works, that is, whether those which pertain to mercy or those which pertain to justice; but that He only foreknew, and did not also predestine, the evil works, that is, sins; because there it is said to be not the work of God, but His judgment. Therefore in sin there is not the work of God, because it was not predestined by Him that the sin should come to be.
But it is His judgment, because that which the wicked man works without God working it is not left unavenged. CHAPTER XXX. The response of Prosper to the fourteenth objection. The response to the fifteenth. The conclusion concerning predestination. But you are also not unaware that in past time, to that most brilliant work of Saint Augustine which he wrote On the Predestination of the Saints, it was objected by certain Gauls that blessed Augustine, in his assertion of divine predestination, said that sinners were predestined not only to judgment, but also to sin; against whose words, because Augustine himself was overtaken by a swift death, Prosper, a learned and holy man, rightly defended the faith in a faithful and copious discourse.
From which chapters of the Gauls, that we may not now set down many things, lest we should seem by our will to make more prolix this little book, which the necessity of disputing compels to be prolix, we have thought fit to insert the passages of two responses. For the fourteenth objection of the Gauls runs thus: 'That those who do not believe the evangelical preaching, do not believe by God's predestination. And that God has so decreed, that whosoever do not believe, by His own ordinance do not believe.' To this perversity, therefore, which was objected against blessed Augustine's words not out of truth but out of malice, Prosper responded with such a discourse: 'The unbelief of those who do not believe the Gospel is by no means generated by God's predestination. For God is the author of good things, not of evil.
God's predestination, therefore, is always in the good, pertaining either to the retribution of justice or to the bestowal of grace. For all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps. 25:10). Accordingly, the unbelief of those who do not believe is to be referred not to God's ordinance, but to His foreknowledge. Which foreknowledge did not for this reason impose the necessity of not believing, because it could not be deceived concerning the unbelief which was to come.' The fifteenth objection also is inserted in these words, that foreknowledge is the same as predestination. To which Prosper responded thus: 'He who in no respect distinguishes God's foreknowledge from His predestination, what is to be attributed to God concerning good things, this he strives to ascribe to Him also concerning evil things.
But since good things are to be referred to God, their bestower and co-worker, while evil things are to be referred to the voluntary wickedness of the rational creature, there is no doubt that God, without any temporal difference, both at once foreknew and predestined those things which were to be done with Himself as author, or which were to be repaid by a just judgment to evil merits; but that He only foreknew, and did not also predestine, those things which were not going to have from Him the cause of their operation.' We therefore, dearest friend, have preferred for the present to insert these few things from the books of Saint Augustine and from the responses of Prosper into this little book, so that all might know what they ought to think concerning the predestination of the saints and of the ungodly;
and at the same time, that it may appear that the tenor of our opinion agrees with the words of the same blessed Augustine. Accordingly, since we have sufficiently shown (as I judge) that the unrighteous are predestined not to sin, but to punishment, we ought now to give an end to this volume, so that a balanced division of the books may renew the reader's zeal for more attentively reviewing the disputation of the other questions. BOOK TWO, comprising three questions: one concerning the offering of the sacrifice, another concerning the mission of the Holy Spirit, the third concerning the supererogation of blessed Paul. CHAPTER ONE. A compendious epilogue concerning the predestination of the just and the unrighteous.
Sufficiently, as I judge, my dearest Monimus, has the earlier discourse (in so far as the Lord has deigned to help our littleness) both treated and resolved the question concerning the diversity of the predestination, namely, of the just and of the unrighteous—that is, of those whom the gratuitous mercy of God, going before them, converts by justifying, to glorify them when converted, and of those whom the just severity of God abandons in their sins, to punish them when damned;
so that most people, although they are wont to be not lightly disturbed in this matter, may easily be both instructed by the testimonies of the divine books and informed by the books of Saint Augustine and by the responses of that most learned man Prosper, by which they may recognize that God's predestination is nothing other than the preparation of His works, which in His eternal disposition He foreknew that He would either mercifully or justly perform;
and that, because in sins neither mercy nor justice is found, therefore all the evil will of the unrighteous, by which they sin, was foreknown, but was nevertheless not predestined by God, since they would not have had that same evil will otherwise than in this, that they were going to withdraw from the Lord. Nor did God predestine man's withdrawal from Himself, since the cause of that withdrawal was the wholly voluntary turning-away of the sinner. Which, because it did not lie hidden from God as future, found in His eternal foreknowledge the penalty of just retribution prepared for it. CHAPTER II. The second question of Monimus concerning the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. Heretics, blinded by their own malice, tear apart the Trinity both in substance and in the veneration of the Father.
A question concerning the faith of Abraham to be prefaced. Now therefore, with the Lord's help, let the intention of our disputation be directed to investigating the remaining questions. You say that you were questioned by some concerning the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, which very many suppose is offered to the Father alone. This too you assert to be, as it were, the crowning interrogation of the heretics. But it is nothing new that heretics, deprived of the light of truth, should think that they will overcome the truth by those very propositions by which they are most easily overcome: For their glory is unto their own confusion who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). Pursuing this, therefore, the heretics seem to propose to themselves as it were crowning and invincible those things whence they do not see confusion impending over them.
But when they are overcome by the truth, this is certainly fulfilled in them, that from that wherein they glory, thence they are confounded. It is no wonder, therefore, if those whom their own malice (as it is written) has blinded, whom the Truth itself (which is the true Light) has forsaken, and whose squalid gaze of a perverse heart the darkness of foul error has hedged about, do not doubt to preach the inseparable Trinity as unequal by a substantial diversity, and consequently strive impiously to tear it apart by an office of unequal honor. And since they are convicted of sinning against Wisdom itself, the word of that same Wisdom is fulfilled in them, that while they sin against it, they admit the sin of impiety into their own souls;
for thus Wisdom herself says: But those who sin against me wrong their own souls; and all who hate me love death (Prov. 8:36). For how do they not hate the Son of God, whom indeed they cannot deny in words to be the Only-begotten, yet distinguish Him from the nature of the Father by an inconsiderate perversity? Or how do they not act impiously against their own souls, who neither consent to glorify the Only-begotten Son of God, namely the true God, together with the Father, nor permit Him to be honored equally by one and the same sacrifice? To whom, with God's help (in so far as the sequence of the present work allows), briefly responding, we preface this interrogation, that they may say:
Whether God gave to His Church that faith by which our father Abraham, believing God, was well-pleasing, and in which he received that all the nations of the earth were to be blessed in his seed; or whether they profess that some other rule of religion was divinely handed down to them, so that they should reckon that the faith of the patriarchs and prophets is to be renounced. And although (as the truth has been demonstrated) they are held in every way strangers to this faith, yet they say it was given to the Church, and contend that it remains inviolate among themselves. CHAPTER III. The question of the sacrifice is determined from the faith of the fathers. The promises made to Abraham and to his seed. Abraham built an altar to sacrifice not to the Father alone, but also to the Son. To invoke in the name of the Lord is the same as to invoke the name of the Lord.
Abraham built an altar to that God who appeared to him. An invincible argument against the heretics from the sacrifice and faith of Abraham. Since, then, the question of the sacrifice is disputed between us and them, we must have recourse to those fathers whom God, like luminaries in the world, glorified by the token of true faith for our instruction; whose faith He deigned to show to be inspired by Himself, so that He is found most evidently to name Himself their God, saying: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this is My name for ever, and My memorial unto generation and generation (Exod. 3:15).
Since therefore we say that the sacrifice is offered not to the Father alone, but at once as one thing to the Father and the Son, while they suppose it is offered to the Father alone, let us seek in the sacrifice of the patriarchs the token of a true immolation pleasing to God. From him, therefore, must our series of proofs be begun, in whose seed is found the future blessing of all nations promised, as Paul says: To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He said not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one: And to thy seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16). And again: That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Gal. 3:14).
Let it therefore be altogether known that those are partakers of the divine blessing and sharers of spiritual grace who are found to be followers of Abraham's faith in the sacrifice. In the book of Genesis we read: The Lord God appeared to Abraham, and said to him: To thy seed will I give this land. And Abraham built there an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him, and departed thence to the mountain over against the east of Bethel, and built there an altar to the Lord God; and he invoked in the name of the Lord God, who appeared to him (Gen. 12:7-8). Let the heretics now choose what they will, so that either they confess that the Father appeared to Abraham, or they certainly consent that the altar was built by Abraham to the Son;
but that the altar was built for no other reason than to offer sacrifice to God, the reading of the Old Testament frequently intimates. For Moses speaks thus concerning Noah the just: And Noah built an altar to God, and as though it were asked for what reason the just man built that altar, he continued and added: And he took of all the clean beasts, and of all the clean fowls, and offered a victim upon the altar to God (Gen. 8:20). It is clear, therefore, that holy Abraham also, the faithful friend of God and the father of the faithful nations, for this reason built an altar to the God who appeared to him: that he might be able to offer Him the sacrifice of a fitting immolation.
But lest, when he is said to have invoked in the name of the Lord God, anyone should suppose that one God was invoked in the name of another God, since to invoke in the name of the Lord God is nothing other than to invoke the name of the Lord God, divine Scripture took care to show this too by an evident manifestation; for a little after it is said thus: And Abraham was very heavily laden with cattle, and with silver, and with gold, and he went thither, whence he had come, into the wilderness as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been before, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made the altar at the first, and there Abraham invoked the name of God (Gen. 13:2-4).
It is therefore recognized that to invoke in the name of the Lord God was this, which is to invoke the name of the Lord God. Wherefore let the heretics say whether they think Abraham built the altar to the Father or to the Son; for whosesoever altar he built, His name assuredly he invoked. But he built the altar to none other than the God who appeared to him, whom the heretics are wont to call the Son: for, striving to teach that a diverse substance befits the Father and the Son, they suppose that all the visible forms of corporeal things—which the most omnipotent Deity, mistress of all creation, as she willed and knew to be fitting to temporal places and persons, adapted for making Himself known to men—are to be assigned to the Son alone;
thence asserting the Son to be unequal to the Father and inferior, because His nature could have been capable of changeable forms. And as though His divinity were by nature visible in that respect, in that He did not disdain to show Himself by visible things to the weak minds of men. Concerning which matter we need not dispute in this work, since the intention of the present question demands only this: that, because holy Abraham is recognized to have sacrificed to that God whom divine Scripture testifies appeared to him, they should either say that the Father appeared to Abraham, or consent that Abraham sacrificed to the Son. For by either horn, as by a twice-sharpened sword, the assertion of their nefarious diversity is cut down;
for if they say the God Father appeared to Abraham, so as to assert that the sacrifice was immolated to Him alone, then in that respect wherein He is asserted to have appeared, the invisible Father is not to be preferred to the invisible Son; but if the Son appeared, and the holy patriarch offered the sacrifice to Him, then the Son is in no respect to be preferred to the Father; for neither would Abraham offer the sacrifice to Him, if he had believed any other more excellent than He. And thus these men, who by the impulse of this question think that our faith is to be shaken, must needs in both cases acknowledge the falsehood of their credulity (or: unbelief). And would that, recognizing it, they might cast it away, and, humble and at peace, now return in a wholesome way to the true faith which they vainly assail as rebels!
For Abraham, who built an altar not to another God, but to Him who appeared to him, so that they may be convicted according to what the heretics hold, either saw the Father or sacrificed to the Son. CHAPTER IV. Isaac too built an altar to the God who appeared to him. Jacob likewise, being commanded, built an altar to the same God. The sacrifices of the patriarchs agree with ours, which are made to the whole Trinity. This God who appeared to Abraham, and to whom Abraham, for no other purpose than to offer sacrifice, built an altar, Isaac too saw, and to Him, holding fast to his father's faith, built an altar. For it is written concerning Isaac (this the book of Genesis contains): And he went up thence to the well of the oath, and the Lord appeared to him
in that night, and said to him: I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and will multiply thy seed for Abraham thy father's sake. And Isaac built there an altar, and invoked in the name of the Lord (Gen. 26:23-25). Without doubt of that Lord who appeared to him and promised the help of His presence, and the gift of blessing, and the increase of a multiplied seed. Jacob too is recognized to have made an altar not to another God, but to Him who appeared to him. And what is more, he did not seize upon this of his own accord, but fulfilled it in obedience to divine precepts. Which holy Scripture testifies in these words: And God said to Jacob:
Arise, go up to the place of Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to thee when thou didst flee from the face of Esau thy brother (Gen. 35:1). And afterwards it is said: And Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is Bethel, he and all the people that were with him, and he built there an altar, and called the name of that place The House of God; for there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother Esau (Gen. 35:6-7). Behold, in the mouth of two and three witnesses the word of our faith stands firm; behold, with the sacrifice of the friends of God the oblation of the catholic Church wholly accords, which so sacrifices to the Father that it sacrifices at once to the whole Trinity;