I will keep my strength unto You, lest even in this very thing—that he keeps it—he should arrogate anything to his own strength, as if it had come into his mind that unless the Lord keep the city, they watch in vain that keep it, and He neither sleeps nor slumbers who keeps it—he added the cause whence he becomes able to keep, or rather by what keeper he is preserved: Because You, O God, are my upholder. Let this man therefore recount, if he can, his own merits, whence it came to pass that God deigned to be his upholder—as though God were the one upheld;
let him recount whether he sought, or rather was sought by Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. For if he should wish to inquire what he merited before grace, so as to receive it, a man will be able to find his own evils, not his goods—even if the grace of the Savior finds him having but one day of life upon the earth—because, if a man works any good in order to merit grace, the wage is not reckoned to him according to grace but according to debt. But if he believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, so that his faith is counted unto righteousness—for the just man lives by faith—then assuredly before he is justified by grace, that is, made righteous, what is the ungodly man but ungodly?
And if debt should follow him, what but punishment would be rendered to his merit? If therefore it is of grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace; for to works a debt is repaid, but grace is freely given, whence indeed it takes its name. But if anyone should say that faith merits the grace of working well, we cannot deny it—nay rather we most gladly confess it. For this is the faith we would have these our brethren, who glory much of their own works, possess: the faith by which they might obtain charity, which alone truly works well. But charity is so far the gift of God that God is even said to be it. Those therefore who have the faith by which they obtain justification, have through the grace of God arrived at the law of righteousness; whence it is said:
In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. Accordingly, in those who are saved by the election of grace, God as helper works both to will and to work according to His good will, since to those who love God all things work together for good; and if all things, then surely also that very love by which we obtain by faith that we may love, through His grace, Him who first loved us so that we might believe in Him, and by loving may work well—which we did not work in order to be loved. But those who expect rewards for their own merits as though for debts, and do not attribute even these merits to the grace of God but to the strength of their own will, just as was said of carnal Israel, following after the law of righteousness do not attain to the law. Why?
Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by works. For this is the righteousness which is by faith, which the Gentiles laid hold of, concerning whom it is said: What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have laid hold of righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, following after the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law. Why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling, as it is written: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in Him shall not be confounded. This is the righteousness which is by faith, by which we believe that we are justified, that is, made righteous by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, that we may be found in Him not having our own righteousness
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God in faith—faith surely—by which we believe that righteousness is given us from God, not made in us by our own strength. For why did the Apostle call that righteousness which is of the law his own, and not God's, as though the law were not of God? Who but an ungodly man would think this? But because the law commands by the letter, it does not help by the spirit. Whoever so hears the letter of the law that it seems sufficient to him to have known what it commands or forbids, and trusts that he will fulfill it by the virtue of his own choice, and does not flee by faith to be helped by the life-giving Spirit, lest the letter, having made him guilty, should slay him—he assuredly has a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
For not knowing the righteousness of God, that is, the righteousness which is given from God, and wishing to establish his own, so that it should be only from the law, he did not submit himself to the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believes, as the same Apostle says, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him. Being therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; and being justified freely by His grace, let not faith itself be proud. Let it not say to itself: 'If it is by faith, how is it freely? For what faith merits, why is it not rather repaid than given?' Let not the faithful man say these things. For when he has said: 'That I may merit justification, I have faith,' the answer is given him: For what have you that you did not receive?
When therefore faith obtains justification, according as God has apportioned to each even the very measure of that faith, no human merit precedes the grace of God, but grace itself merits to be increased, so that being increased it may merit also to be perfected—the will accompanying, not leading, following as a handmaid, not going before. Whence he who said: I will keep my strength unto You: Because You, O God, are my upholder—as though inquiring by what merits he had obtained this, and finding nothing in himself before the grace of God—says: My God, His mercy will go before me. However much, he says, I consider my preceding merits, His mercy will go before me.
Accordingly, keeping unto Him the strength bestowed by Him, by that same Preserver he does not lose what he received from that same Giver. Nor does he merit anything more for any other reason than by piously and faithfully knowing from whom all his good things come, and by knowing this not of himself—lest even this itself be not in him, which is not from God. Whence the Apostle most excellently says: We have received, not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that are given us by God. And through this, even the very merit of man is a free gift; nor does anyone merit to receive any good thing from the Father of lights, from whom comes down every good gift, except by receiving that which he does not merit.
But it is a much more bountiful and, without any doubt, freely given thing that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord bestows upon infants, that generation from Adam may not harm them and regeneration in Christ may profit them—in whom the mercy of God so far anticipates the very sense of receiving. For these, assuredly, if they depart from the body at this tiny age, receive eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, knowingly, by the merit of that gift which here, though it certainly profited them, they did not know. Surely in these the merits of the later gifts are nothing but the prior gifts. In the giving of which the grace of God so works that the will of the recipients is neither sent before, nor joined, nor made to follow after,
seeing that so great a benefit is given not only to those who are not willing but even to those who resist—which would be reckoned to them as a great sacrilege, if there were already in them any efficacy of the will's choice. This we have said on account of those who, being unwilling in the matter of grace to search out the inscrutable judgments of God—why out of the lump of Adam, which surely all fell together into condemnation out of one man, He makes this vessel unto honor and that unto dishonor—nevertheless dare to constitute little ones guilty of their own sins, so that those who cannot think good or evil should be thought able, through free choice, to merit either punishment or grace; whereas rather the apostolic truth, by saying:
By one man all unto condemnation, sufficiently shows that they are born in punishment, so that they are reborn not by merit but by mercy into grace. Otherwise grace is no longer grace, if it is not freely given by divine riches, but repaid to human merits. This alone so distinguishes from punishment that, whereas punishment is owed to all from Adam, but grace through the one Jesus Christ is owed to none but freely given—so that it may be true grace—the judgments of God may indeed be inscrutable, as being God's, as to why He Himself distinguishes little ones whom no merits distinguish, yet they cannot be unjust, because all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Whence when the mercy of grace is offered to one, he has no ground
to glory of human merit, since it is not of works, lest perchance anyone be exalted; but when to another the truth of vengeance is repaid, he has no ground to complain justly; for that is repaid which is by right owed to sin, since the one in whom all sinned is surely punished not unjustly even in each several individual. In whose punishment it is more clearly shown what is conferred on the vessels of mercy through grace that is not owed but true—that is, free. But by what do they argue against the Apostle who most openly says: By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned—by saying that even little ones have sins of their own through free choice?
It is wearisome to attend to and irksome to bring forth, but rather we are compelled to speak. For what great and keen minds have been able to devise, either it belongs to poverty to avoid by silence, or to arrogance to pass over by disdain. 'Behold,' they say, 'Esau and Jacob struggle within their mother's womb, and while they are being born, one is supplanted by the other, and in the foot of the one going before, the hand of the one following and holding him being found, the struggle is in a certain manner proven to persevere.
How then, in infants doing these things, is there no choice of their own will either to good or to evil, whence rewards or punishments might follow upon preceding merits?' To this we say that those movements and the seeming quarrel of the little ones were a sign of great matters, because it was not choice but a portent. For neither shall we grant to asses even a free choice of power, since a beast of burden of this kind, as it is written, being made subject, without voice answering in the manner of a man, forbade the prophet's madness. But these who contend that not portentous movements but voluntary acts—not concerning little ones but done by little ones—must reply what to the Apostle, who,
when he saw that these twins also were to be mentioned as evidence of freely given grace, said: For when they were not yet born, nor had done anything of good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calls, it was said that the elder shall serve the younger. Then, adding the testimony of the prophet who spoke these things indeed long after, but nevertheless declaring the ancient counsel of God concerning this matter: As it is written, he says, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Assuredly the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth testifies that these twins, not yet born, had done nothing of good or evil, that grace might be commended, so that what was said:
The elder shall serve the younger, be understood as said not of works but of Him that calls, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, and not the merit of man go before. For he does not say the election of the human will or of nature, since the condition of death and condemnation was equal in both, but assuredly the election of grace, which does not find those to be chosen, but makes them; concerning which, speaking also in what follows of the same epistle, he says: So then at this present time also a remnant has been saved by the election of grace. But if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. With this passage that place accords well enough, where it is recorded as said not of works but of Him that calls: The elder shall serve the younger.
To what end, then, is so shameless a resistance offered to the most illustrious commender of grace, concerning the free choice of infants and the acts of the not-yet-born? Why is grace said to be anticipated by merits—grace which would not be grace, if it were imputed according to merit? Why against the salvation which is sent to the lost, which comes to the unworthy, is it contended—however keenly, however copiously and ornately—yet strange to say, by Christian disputation? 'But how,' one says, 'is there no unrighteousness with God, if He distinguishes by loving those whom no merits of works distinguish?' Thus is this said to us, as though the Apostle himself had not seen it, not propounded it, not answered it. He surely saw what, on hearing these things, human weakness or ignorance might think.
And proposing the same question to himself: What shall we say then? he says; is there unrighteousness with God? He immediately answered: God forbid. And rendering the reason why not—that is, why there is no unrighteousness with God—he does not say: 'For He judges the merits or works even of little ones, even if they are still constituted in their mother's womb'—for how could he say this, who had already said, concerning the not-yet-born and concerning those who had as yet done nothing of good or evil, that it was said not of works but of Him that calls: The elder shall serve the younger?—but wishing to show why in these there is no unrighteousness with God: For He says to Moses, he says: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I am compassionate.
What did He here teach us but that from that lump of the first man, to which by desert death is owed, it pertains not to the merits of men but to the mercy of God that anyone is set free? And that thus there is no unrighteousness with God, because neither in remitting nor in exacting what is owed is He unjust? For there indulgence is welcome, where vengeance could be just. And hence it appears more evidently how great a benefit is conferred on one set free from the punishment due and freely justified, in that another, equally guilty, is punished without any injustice on the part of the Punisher. Finally he adds and says: Therefore it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. This is said on account of those who are set free and justified through grace. But on account of those upon whom the wrath of God abides,
because God uses even them well for the teaching of others whom He deigns to set free, he adds and says: For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: For this very purpose have I raised you up, that I might show in you My power, and that My name might be declared in all the earth. Then concluding as to both: Therefore, he says, He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens—surely neither by any unrighteousness, but both by mercy and truth. And yet still their weakness is boldly stirred—the weakness, that is, of those who according to the conjectures of the human heart attempt to think out the inscrutable depth of God's judgments. Setting this against himself as an objection, the Apostle says: You will say to me then: 'Why does He yet find fault?
For who resists His will?' Let us suppose this said to us. What else then, but what the Apostle answered, ought we to answer? Or if such things move even us, because we too are men, let us all together hear him at once, saying: O man, who are you that reply against God? Does the thing formed say to Him who formed it: 'Why have you made me thus?' Has not the potter power over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? If this lump were so neutral that, just as it merited nothing of good, so it merited nothing of evil either, then not without cause would injustice seem to be present, that vessels unto dishonor should be made of it;
but since through the free choice of the first man the whole flowed down into condemnation out of one, without doubt that vessels are made of it unto honor is to be attributed not to its own righteousness, which no grace preceded, but to the mercy of God; and that some are made unto dishonor is to be attributed not to the unrighteousness of God—far be it that such should be with God—but to His judgment. Whoever thinks this with the catholic Church does not dispute against grace on behalf of merits, but sings mercy and judgment to the Lord, so that the ungrateful man may neither refuse mercy nor the unjust man accuse judgment. For that sprinkling is another, of which the same Apostle says: But if the firstfruits be holy, so also is the lump; and if the root be holy, so also are the branches.
That one is from Abraham, not from Adam—that is, by the communion of the sacrament and the likeness of faith, not by mortal propagation; but this sprinkling, or, as it is read in most manuscripts, the lump, since the whole is of death, seeing that by one man sin entered into the world and by sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned—out of it by mercy one vessel is made unto honor, but by judgment another unto dishonor. Neither there do merits precede the grace of the Liberator, nor here do sins escape the justice of the Punisher. And this indeed, in the case of those of greater age, does not so evidently appear against the contentious, where, as it were protected by whatever obscurity, they wrangle on behalf of the merits of men.
But therefore, against their contention, the Apostle found those concerning whom, not yet born nor having done anything of good or evil, it was said not of works but of Him that calls: 'The elder shall serve the younger.' In which matter, since the judgments of God are too high and inscrutable, and His ways past finding out, meanwhile let a man hold that there is no unrighteousness with God; but by what equity He has mercy on whom He wills, and hardens whom He wills, let him confess that he, being but a man, is ignorant—yet in such a way that, on account of that which he holds unshaken, that there is no unrighteousness with God, although no one is justified by Him through preceding merits, yet let him know that no one is hardened except by desert.
For it is piously and truly believed that God, by justifying the guilty and the ungodly, sets them free from the punishments they owe; but if God is believed to condemn anyone undeserving and liable to no sin, He is not believed to be free from unrighteousness. Where therefore the unworthy is set free, so much the greater thanksgiving is owed, by how much the juster punishment was owed; but where the undeserving is condemned, neither mercy nor truth is maintained. 'How then,' they say, 'is Esau not condemned undeserving, if it was said not of works but of Him that calls, that the elder shall serve the younger?
For just as no good works of the former preceded, that he might pertain to grace, so neither did any evil works of the latter, that he should pertain to punishment.' Plainly in both there were no works, either good or evil, that were their own; but each was liable to that one in whom all sinned, so that all should die in him. For whoever of that one were to be many in themselves, then in him they were one. Accordingly that sin would be his alone, if from him none had come forth; but further, in whom the common nature existed, none is immune from his fault. If therefore both, who did not yet work either good or evil of their own, were nevertheless born guilty from their origin, let him who is set free praise mercy, let him who is punished not blame the judgment. Here, if we should say:
'How much better it were that both should be set free!'—nothing more fitting will be said to us than: O man, who are you that reply against God? For He indeed knows what He does, and how great the number ought to be, first of all men, then of the saints, like the stars, like the angels; and—to speak of earthly things—like the cattle, the fish, the fowl, like the trees and grasses, like, in short, our leaves and hairs. For we, in human thinking, can still say: 'Since all these things which He made are good, how much better it were had He doubled or multiplied them, that they might be far more numerous than they are!' For if the world did not contain them, could He not indeed make even the world itself, as large as He willed, more capacious?
And yet however much He should make either those things more numerous or this world more capacious and greater, none the less the same things could be said about multiplying them, and there would be no limit to the boundless. For indeed even this can be said: whether it be grace, by which the unjust are justified—of which we may not doubt—or, as some would have it, whether free choice always precedes, upon whose merit either punishment or reward follows, why were they created at all, whom God foreknew without doubt would so sin that they must be condemned to eternal fire? For although He did not make their sins, yet the natures themselves,
which in themselves are without doubt good, in which nevertheless, out of the choice of the will, there would be future vices of sins, and in many such that eternal punishment must be repaid—who but God created them? Why, unless because He willed it? But why He willed it—O man, who are you that reply against God? Does the thing formed say to Him who formed it: 'Why have you made me thus?' Has not the potter power over the clay, out of the same sprinkling to make one vessel indeed unto honor, but another unto dishonor? And so let us now say what follows:
But if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, which are fitted unto destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy—behold, the reason too has been rendered to man, as much as was owed to man—if indeed even this he grasps, who on behalf of the liberty of his own choice contends in the servitude of so great a weakness—behold, the causes have been stated.
You then, who are you that reply against God, if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known—that He, the Best, can use even evil things well, evil things at least not by any divine ordinance but by the vitiated iniquity of a will, a nature which was created good by God its Founder—endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, which are fitted unto destruction, not because those sins, whether angelic or human, were necessary to Him, to whom not even the righteousness of any creature is necessary, but that He might make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy, that they should not exalt themselves in good works as of their own strength, but should humbly understand that, unless the grace of God, not owed but freely given, came to their aid, that would have been repaid to their merits which they perceived repaid to others in the same lump?
There is therefore a fixed number and multitude of the saints, foredefined in the foreknowledge of God, to whom, loving God (which He gave them through the Holy Spirit poured out in their hearts), all things work together for good, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be Himself the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He predestined, them He also called. Here we ought to supply 'according to His purpose.' For there are also others called, but not chosen, and through this not called according to the purpose. But whom He called—that is, according to the purpose—them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
These are the children of promise, these are the elect who are saved by the election of grace, where it is said: But if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. These are the vessels of mercy, in which God, even through the vessels of wrath, makes known the riches of His glory. Of these there is made through the Holy Spirit one heart and one soul, which blesses the Lord and forgets not all His benefits—who is merciful to all their iniquities, who heals all their diseases, who redeems their life from corruption, who crowns them in pity and mercy—because it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. But the rest of men, who do not belong to this fellowship,
Nevertheless, the goodness of God wrought both the soul and the body of these men, and whatever their very nature possesses apart from that fault which the boldness of a proud will inflicted upon it. For this reason they were created by God, who foreknew all, that in them He might display what the free choice of the deserter could accomplish without His grace, and that, amid their just and merited punishments, the vessels of mercy—which were separated from that mass not by the merits of their own works but by the free grace of God—might learn what had been bestowed upon them, so that every mouth might be stopped, and whoever glories might glory in the Lord. Whoever teaches otherwise and does not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said: The Son of Man came to seek and to save
that which was lost—for He did not say 'that which was going to be lost,' but 'that which was lost'—what does this show except that by the sin of the first man the nature of the whole human race had perished? Whoever, then, teaches otherwise and, not consenting to the doctrine which is according to godliness, defends human nature as though it were safe and free, against the grace of the Saviour and against the blood of the Redeemer, and yet affects to be reckoned by the Christian name—what will he say concerning the distinction among infants: why one is taken up into life through the second Man, while another is left in the death of the first man? If he should say that the merits of free choice went before, the Apostle has answered, in what we quoted above concerning those not yet born and having done nothing good or evil:
But if he should say what is still defended in the books which Pelagius is reported to have most recently published—although in the episcopal judgment held in Palestine he already seems to have anathematized those who say that Adam's sin harmed himself alone and not the human race—if, then, he should say that both are born without fault and have drawn nothing from the first man's condemnation, then, since he does not dare to deny that one who has been regenerated in Christ is adopted into the kingdom of heaven, let him answer what will become of the one who, through no fault of his own, has not been baptized and has been overtaken by this temporal death. We do not think he will say that God will condemn to eternal death an innocent, one who has no original sin, before the years in which he could have any sin of his own;
He is therefore forced to answer what Pelagius, in the ecclesiastical judgment, was compelled to anathematize in order that he might in some way be pronounced catholic: namely, that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. For if this is denied, what will remain but eternal death? And by this he will also dispute against the sentence of the Lord, who says: Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead; this is the bread that comes down from heaven, that if anyone eat of it, he may not die—for He was not speaking of that death which even those who eat of that bread must needs suffer; and a little after: Amen, amen, I say to you;