What did He wish them to hear, that He spoke with testimony? What indeed, but the commandments of life? As another prophet says: 'Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life' (Baruch III, 9). But what these commandments of life are the Psalmist adds and continues: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt' (Ps. LXXX, 11). And that these are the commandments of life the Lord shows by the exhortation with which He commended His disciples to the Father, saying: 'For this is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent' (John XVII, 3). After this calling follows that which He both wills to pertain to the endeavors of men, and shows cannot be fulfilled without Himself:
for this is what the Apostle says: 'For it is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will' (Phil. II, 13). For from Him we have the will, because He calls and enlightens; from Him the accomplishing, because it belongs to us to strive after the good things which He also gave us to will. Nor did the Apostle without caution, when he had said, 'Because from Him we have both to will and to accomplish,' add 'according to His good will'; so that again and again they may see where they have, from the justice of God, that free will of which they boast. But that order by which the Lord distributes His diverse mercies by the dispensation of times, as the Apostle perceived Moses to have said, let us also see in the continued discourse of this psalm. For what does he say, after he had taught the called, saying:
'For I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.' 'Open wide your mouth,' He says, 'and I will fill it' (Ps. LXXX, 11). Here again something appears to have been reserved for man, which he ought to do through free will. For he is bidden to open wide his mouth, but God promises to fill it. Just as He had also said to His disciples in the Gospel: 'Do not be anxious how or what you shall speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you' (Matt. X, 19-20). This alone He referred to them, that they should willingly undertake every necessity of tribulation for the truth, but the effect He promised to lie with Himself.
What place then is reserved for free will, that without God's help, supported by rational dignity, it may accomplish whatever it has willed—if human nature does not suffice for itself, the Psalmist immediately shows: 'And My people did not hear My voice, and Israel did not heed Me' (Ps. LXXX, 12). He who had said, when He called, 'Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify to you'—what, testifying, had He commended to the minds of the hearers? 'I am the Lord your God.' What also had He bidden be done by those whom, delivered from the land of Egypt and from the darkness of ignorance, He had led out into the light of His commandments, in the splendor of the calling? 'Open wide,' He says, 'your mouth.'
And at once, as though He said, 'If you should wish to open wide while I forsake you, it will profit nothing,' He thus added: 'and I will fill it.' What then does He who had called, and had taught the called, add in a complaining voice concerning them? 'And My people did not hear My voice,' He says, 'and Israel did not heed Me.' Let the defender of free will against God now come forth, let him hear the Apostle saying, when he spoke of his good labors: 'Yet not I, but the grace of God with me' (1 Cor. XV, 10). Let him hear the voice of God in the psalm, saying of those whom He had forsaken: 'And I let them go after the desires of their heart; they shall walk in their own devices' (Ps. LXXX, 13).
Let him hear one and the same Apostle attributing to himself only evils from the various times of his life, but to the grace of God all good things: 'Though I formerly was a blasphemer,' he says, 'and a persecutor' (1 Tim. I, 13). And in another place: 'By the grace of God I am what I am' (1 Cor. XV, 10). When he said, 'Though I formerly was a blasphemer and a persecutor,' no mention of grace was coupled with the wicked deed: because for it, as has been said, the nature of human freedom suffices unto wickedness. But when he spoke of the blessedness of the present life, he said: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.'
And that order by which God has mercy in calling, and thereafter has mercy in aiding the undertakings begun—as it was narrated and arranged in the series of the psalm—the blessed apostle Paul also preserved in a continuous narration. For if in the order which he set forth the excerpted testimonies be read again, he speaks thus: 'By the grace of God,' he says, 'I am what I am.' This is the first mercy, which the works of free will follow. But that good works might follow the calling of the apostle Paul, what does he say? 'And His grace in me was not in vain.' For what did you do? 'I labored more,' he says, 'than all of them.' Do not boast too much, O defender of free will, hearing Paul glorying in his labors;
attend to what follows: 'Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.' I think indeed that none of those who blaspheme against the grace of God with a heart exalted before ruin, as it is written (Prov. XVI, 18), will assume so much of shameless arrogance as to esteem himself either equal to the merits of the blessed prophet David, or even to be preferred to him. Of him—that I may for the moment be silent concerning that first recompense which no one would not confess to be undeserved, namely the kingdom bestowed upon him—let us weigh the intentions and affections of his prayers and confessions. For he himself defines in the psalm: 'Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law' (Ps. XCIII, 12).
But let us see whether, to him already instructed and sufficiently trained in all knowledge of the law according to Jewish instruction, this alone sufficed for blessedness. Why then did the same man again cry to the Lord: 'Give me understanding, and I will search Your law, and I will keep it with my whole heart' (Ps. CXVIII, 34)? It was too little that he had begged understanding to search the law, unless he also signified the aid necessary for keeping it, saying: 'And I will keep it with my whole heart'; as though he said, 'Then I will keep it with my whole heart, if You give understanding.' CHAP. XII.
Let that proud defender of his own will still answer to these things, that the prophet begged the help of divine aid only for understanding the divine commandments, which nevertheless he was going to fulfill by his own strength. But if these things are so, I would like, blessed David, to search out a little from you the hidden things of your meanings. Whence then, I ask you, the conflict of flesh and spirit? Whence that apostolic struggle, as you yourself confess? Even indeed, enlightened and instructed by the gift of understanding which you had begged from God, you cry and say: 'Turn away my eyes, that they may not behold vanity' (Ps. CXVIII, 37). For with the understanding surely received, to discern vanity from truth, as you asked, why do you not turn your eyes away from the vanity which displeases?
If you reprove avarice, why do you not, separated from it by your own will, incline your heart to the commandments of salvation, but, as one weak in all things, cry to God: 'Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to avarice'—unless because the law of sin born in the members suggests avarice, and the holy man still wills his own eyes, nor can of himself turn them away; and thus the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Gal. V, 17): from which strife nothing delivers but grace, which through our Lord Jesus Christ is given to small and great (Rom. VII, 25). For to will is present with me, but to accomplish I do not find (Rom. VII, 18).
Although the very willing is not of ourselves, but the gift of God, since from Him we have both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will (Phil. II, 13). Blessed therefore are you, since with the apostles of Christ you are in concord both in doctrine and in equality of the struggle: for both in your writings we recognize the wars of the apostles, and your contests we find in the apostolic writings. CHAP. XIII. Whence this diversity of things and of wills in one and the same man, who consists of soul and body, except because, holding fast the just judgments of God, man against God, the creature against the Creator, the lowest against the highest, finds within himself the penalties of disobedience and the contumacy of his inferior part?
For by what justice, though the worse be subject to the better, would the creature serve the creature, if the creature of whatever sort was unwilling to serve the Creator? But not even this suffices for punishment—that that worse part should resist the better affections of the heart—unless it also for the most part overcame, led into captivity, took possession, and unless the law of sin itself claimed for the service of its own motions not only men born in Adam, but also assailed, with the suggestion remaining, those reborn in Christ. For indeed through that gift of regeneration the guilt is remitted; the condition of grace is not dissolved, blotting out the ancient handwriting of debts;
not yet separating from carnal passion the man still living in the flesh, so that every man for the time to come may implore the divine aid one by one. And since the law could not so much take away sin as show it—that sin which men being born everywhere claimed for themselves, and possessed by the consent of concupiscence, plunged them into eternal destruction—our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. II, 7), and though He Himself was not sin, being made sin by the flesh He assumed, that with the flesh of man healed from sin He might condemn sin in the flesh, He came to seek what had perished (Luke XIX, 10).
to heal what was sick, to raise up what lay fallen, having power to forgive sins—to give what He did not owe, to remit what was owed to Him—and, all the stains of the old fault being blotted out, to restore the nature which He had made. Of those for whom just severity had decreed punishment, according to the ineffable mercy of His hidden disposition, He chose vessels which He would make unto honor, and released some from the wrath to come by the gift of a gratuitous calling, and, leaving others behind, reserved them for the judgment of equity, yet did not take away from them the faculty of acknowledging the truth: and thus the fullness of the divine foreknowledge was completed, justice remaining upon some, grace flowing forth upon others;
so that, with those perishing whom God had foreknown were to perish, and those being saved whom in that secret election He had foreknown were to be saved, the Church spread through the whole world might be multiplied. CHAP. XIV. Rejoice therefore, O whoever you are that have been enlightened, and acknowledge the grace which you did not merit. Groan, whoever you are that have been hardened, and confess His justice. Say, whoever you are that rejoice to have been washed from the original contagion by the laver of grace: 'The Lord is merciful and gracious, patient and of much mercy. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities' (Ps. CII, 8 and 10). Say, whoever you are that are condemned: 'You are just, O Lord, in all that You have done to us, and all Your judgments are true:
yea, in truth and judgment You have brought all these things upon us, because of our sins' (Dan. III, 27-28): and do not then ascribe the blame of your hardening to the injustice of God, for all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps. XXIV, 10), so that neither those who have obtained mercy from God may glory, by the judgment of truth, in anything from their own merits; nor may those who are hardened and condemned believe that they can have from this an excuse of their fault, namely that they obtained no mercy by which they might be converted. This mercy, then, Pharaoh did not receive, and therefore free will sufficed him unto perishing—whom indeed no one so ignorant of the divine Scriptures will be, as to dare to say that he suffered all those things unjustly.
Or perhaps, if we think of God devoutly as is fitting, do we find that mercy was given even to Pharaoh? For the patience of God ought to have availed for his salvation, when, deferring the just and merited punishment, it heaped up frequent blows of miracles. Could he not, just as, when struck with scourges, he cast out the people, so, believing at the miracles, have acknowledged God of such great power? If it is said that Pharaoh could not be changed, because God had foreknown he was not to be changed, the answer is that God's foreknowledge does not compel a man to be such as God foreknew; but foreknows that he will be such as he will be, although God did not so make him. For if He compelled him to be, He would surely compel that which is not.
Further, if He had foreknown that to be future which is not, it would not be foreknowledge—which, how impiously it be said of God, everyone perceives who flatters himself in his sins on this ground, that God foreknew he would be a sinner. CHAP. XV. Nevertheless I think perhaps someone exists who may say that the way to salvation is less fitting, if, without being struck by any inward calling, yet someone is scourged. Whence did Nebuchadnezzar merit a fruitful repentance (Dan. IV, 33)? Did he not, after innumerable impieties, being scourged, repent, and receive again the kingdom which he had lost? But Pharaoh (Exod. VIII and following) was made harder by those very scourges, and perished.
Here let him who judges the divine counsel—too deep for a wise heart—render me an account: why the medicine compounded by one physician availed for some unto destruction, for others unto salvation, except because the good fragrance of Christ is to some the fragrance of life unto life, to others the fragrance of death unto death (2 Cor. II, 15-16)? As to nature, both were men; as to dignity, both were kings; as to their cause, both were possessing a captive people of God; as to punishment, both were mercifully admonished by scourges. What then made their ends to be diverse, except that the one, perceiving the hand of God in the remembrance of his own iniquity, groaned, while the other fought with free will against the most merciful truth of God?
To whoever answers here that divine aid was present to the one so that he might be changed, but that protection was lacking to the other so that he might be hardened, and who contends that this is unjust — because the Apostle, placing the outcomes of these very things in the will of God, said, 'He has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens' (Rom. 9:18), the Lord himself saying, 'Without me you can do nothing' (John 15:5) — let him understand that all those things are either brought to completion when the Lord helps, or permitted when he withdraws, so that he may nevertheless know that, when the Lord is unwilling, absolutely nothing is allowed to happen. CHAPTER XVI. But let us return to the little ones, let us return to the twins: too little is what I have said — let us return to those not yet born, who had been sown in the same act of conception and were to be brought forth into the light at the very same moment.
To them a discordant and diverse judgment of the divine will appears, and the greatness of the question troubles the minds of men who too proudly dispute concerning the will of God. Lift up your voice now with all your strength, O unjust accuser of the Just One, and tell me: what evil did that one commit, what good did he deserve? And there answers you — not I, but Paul the Apostle: 'Indeed neither of them deserved anything; but the potter has power over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour' (Rom. 9:21). You will say, 'Why? What is this so confused diversity of judgment?' Again let him refute this presumption and say, 'O man, who are you that you should answer God?' (Rom. 9:20) — especially because it pertains to this.
When intention is turned to a comparison of human deeds, the answer is that a creditor cannot be charged with injustice who, of two debtors, has willed to hold such a judgment that he forgives one and exacts from the other what is owed by both. And certainly in all the acts and contracts of human dealings, by which we seem to approve some form of justice in discerning and adjudicating a matter, it is manifest that this flows into the hearts of our lowliness out of the ineffable fullness of the divine justice — as blessed John confirms in his Gospel: 'Of his fullness we have all received' (John 1:16).
But if this is so, with what impudence, in the end, shall man judge concerning God, the clay concerning the potter — not only saying, 'Why have you made me thus?' but even, with damnable curiosity, prying into the affairs of others and saying, 'Why, out of the same lump, have you made one thus and another so?' If the human race, which is established to have been created at first out of nothing, were not born with the due origin of death and sin, and yet the omnipotent Creator willed to condemn some of them to everlasting destruction, who would say to the omnipotent Creator, 'Why have you done thus?' For he who had granted them to be when they were not, had the power to determine unto what end they should be;
nor would the rest say why, when the merits of all were equal, the divine decision should differ, since the potter has power over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour (Rom. 9:21). But now, when just punishment is rendered to the condemned, while undeserved grace is granted to the saved, who is so forgetful of the human condition as to sift the secrets of the divine mind — so that, having himself deservedly incurred punishment, he asks why another has received grace which was not owed to him? This divine election, then — that it is not rendered according to merits but bestowed on men by the sole beneficence of the will — Moses showed even then, though he was teaching a carnal people. For thus
clearly says to the people in Deuteronomy: 'Behold, the heaven belongs to the Lord your God, and the heaven of heavens, the earth and all that is in it; nevertheless the Lord chose your fathers to love them, and chose their seed after them, even you, above all nations.' And he added: 'Circumcise therefore the hardness of your heart, and stiffen your neck no more' (Deut. 10:14–16). But that this hardness of heart remained in them, as we have already said above, blessed Stephen showed when he rebuked the Jews. For in the Acts of the Apostles, as he himself says, 'You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit' (Acts 7:51).
Whence comes the stiff neck in that people which was chosen out of the whole world, which by ten miracles was granted deliverance from slavery, to which the Law was given, for whose salvation the mouths of all the prophets served, from which Christ was made according to the flesh, and to whom he was sent — unless because blindness has come upon part of Israel, until Israel, adopted, should enter into the kingdom out of the fullness of the Gentiles (Rom. 11:25); and the Lord shut up all in unbelief, that all might stand in need of the mercy of the Saviour?
Touching upon the mysteries of this divine counsel and the secret of its majesty — which, though he knew them through the greatness of the revelations, yet, sinking beneath them because of human weakness, even he who for persecutions and blasphemies deserved to be named the Vessel of Election — marvelling, cries out: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Rom. 11:33), confessing his ways to be unsearchable and the judgments of God past finding out.
With him, therefore, when such matters are asked, let us marvel; and, the sentence standing firm that there is no iniquity with God, if there be anything that is asked which surpasses the measure of our understanding, and does not deign to fit within the narrowness of our intellect, let us confess, with unshaken equity, that it abides in that fullness of the divine justice, mercy, and foreknowledge. Lest, disputing about the higher secrets of the divine will otherwise than the measure of our condition permits, we should abandon the justice of God, and, desiring to establish our own, fall into the lowest abyss of obstinacy.