Works 1 part 6/7

'What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; but Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by works. For they stumbled at the stone of stumbling.' When it is said 'not of works,' you see that the works of the Law are done away, and that for the Gentiles obedience opened the way to mercy, while for the Jews the preceding iniquity and unbelief prepared the offence. 'Not of works,' he says, 'but of him that calleth it was said.' He does not call them void of their own works, but denies that they were saved by the works of the Law.

Far be it that here a condemnation of origin should be reckoned to be set forth, where the benignity of Him who calls and the humility of him who obeys are proclaimed, and where a universal doctrine inculcates the riches of faith and instils the light of believing. Let not, therefore, in this place any assertion of iniquity insinuate itself which would claim that in the very condition of creation part of the human race was condemned. But the causes why God loved Jacob and hated Esau, the history of Genesis has evidently expressed, that you may understand it was pronounced from on high not without an examination of works nor without clear reason, that Esau should be held worthy of God's hatred and Jacob of His love. There plainly appeared in the life of Jacob evident causes which [warranted] the judgment. VII. .......................

(WHAT IS MEANT BY WHAT HE SAYS, 'THAT THE PURPOSE OF GOD MIGHT STAND'). VIII. (AGAINST WHAT THEY SAY: ALL ADAM PERISHED). ....... 'Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' He did not set sin over man by this law of His ordinance, but subjected it. Behold, the most gracious Governor, desiring His creature to be noble even after the fall to which it was inclined, although He does not command the will of man to be the servant of every passion and concupiscence, but its mistress, placed both the friendship and the repulse of the seducer in the hand of man and set it within his judgment. He seems indeed to have left the desire of either work to man's own choice, but for this reason: that by the licence of evil the glory of good might be made. But 'Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.'

He is shut in by no necessity of sinning, to whose discretion it is committed that by the superior liberty he should have dominion over sin. But the degenerate soul, which with the help of God can obtain victory over sin, prefers with the offence of God to be the servant of sin. Since these things are so, after the transgression of the first man there succeeded to man's purpose not the death of the will, but its weakness; not impossibility, but difficulty, with labour. But Abel also merited to please the divine sight through the good implanted generally by God, that is, through the affection of his own will. This man, then, on whom the perfection of an unstained life bestowed the surname of 'the just'—by whose teaching would he have become a follower of righteousness, unless the law inscribed in his inward parts had taught him?

Or whence would he have known to choose sacrifices that would please God and be taken up from heaven by fire, from the fat and the firstfruits, unless faith—which had made him a lover of virtues—had inspired him, as we read: 'By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, God testifying of his gifts'? Which he could in no way have obtained, unless to the Lord's gift the service of the servant had been added. And do you judge that he who has nothing of his own by the ordinance of God, to whose devotion God bears witness? You see that the good of believing is no new privilege, but an ancient one, and that among the very beginnings of the coalescing world the mind of man was endowed by the supreme Author with faith, just as with understanding and reason.

And so already then He gave the soul knowledge of Himself, when He deigned to entrust to it His own image. IX. AFTER WHOSE IMAGE AND LIKENESS THE FIRST MAN WAS CREATED. But you say: 'Why do you join to me the image of God in the matter of free will, since that surpassing Creator, who was to be also the Redeemer of the ages to come, made man rather after that image which He was going to assume from man through the Virgin?' This persuasion is put forward by very many, but it is stripped bare of all reason, because the beginnings of the earlier can in no way put on the image of one much later. Or how could he who was first created receive the likeness of one not yet created?

Among these things it can more easily be believed that the first Adam transmitted his own image to the second Adam according to the reason of order and time. But it could by no means happen that he who was formed so many ages before should be called the image of a substance not yet existing, and that a foolish assertion should be proved—namely that, as they say, the person of the most ancient first-formed man should precede the Author of the likeness who was to be brought forth from the Virgin. To this is added, that that notion would greatly humble in man the glory of his first innocence, if the unstained one were fashioned after the exemplar of Him who was to cure the stains of one about to sin, so that, while the transgression did not yet exist, the form of the future Intercessor should already bear the guilt of transgression.

It was therefore not consequent that a being consummate and perfect should be made after the image of Him through whom what was lost had to be restored, lest under the name of the coming Physician, in the very time of the happy beginning, the ruin of him who was to be supplanted should seem to be foretold. This therefore agrees better with reason: that in man—to whom in that very likeness a matter of grace, not of nature, is handed over by God—that should rather be called 'image' which is received from a prior and superior, and that the likeness should more fully be judged to have been conferred from the Truth, which nevertheless the Father shares by right with the natural Son. Then this too must be more carefully noted: that our Lord Jesus Christ in the first time conferred better things from His own, but in the second took up worse things from ours.

And therefore, when He prepared us out of nothing, as Maker He set His own image upon us; but when He restored us who were lost, as Restorer He took up the form of a servant, as the Apostle says: 'Taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man.' But if we were formed after that appearance of the outer man, in whose members are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, what honour or grace will there be if we share in that image which we know to be for the greatest part common to us with the beast? Grave, then, is the error of those who suppose that the first man was composed by the incorporeal Trinity after the model of Him who was to be assumed from Mary.

For neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit was to be clothed with the garment of flesh and the fashion of a man, so that He should dispose the lineaments and mould the members of the first man as it were after the appearance and making of His own image, so as to be able to say: 'Let us make man after the image and likeness which we are going to assume from this Virgin.' And therefore whatever the Trinity bestows on man in common is derived from the likeness of the deity. And not even so could the first man be said to have received the image of the second Adam, even if the Son of God alone had created man. But since the united Trinity says, 'Let us make man after our image and likeness,' mingling the singular with the plural and the plural with the singular, and again:

'And God made man after His own image and likeness; after the image of God made He him'—as often as you read that man was created after the image of God, by what authority do you presume, against the divine oracles, to assert that he was composed after the form of a servant? Since therefore this image is conferred by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, without doubt the one deity of the three persons bestowed on the first man the dignity of His own image. Since these things are so, you will least of all doubt that there is in man—albeit weakened—a liberty of his own will, if you regard the first grace with which he was honoured by God. Man is therefore called the image of God, because Truth graciously and worthily grafted into him righteousness, reason wisdom, perpetuity eternity.

It belongs to the image of God that he understands, that he savours what is right, that by a discerning judgment he distinguishes between evil and good. And since God is goodness, mercy, patience and justice, the more just and patient each one is found to be, the more he is approved as like to God—whose likeness, indeed, is possessed not in countenances but in virtues. And therefore it is said of God: subtle, simple, sincere. Simple, surely, because there is in Him nothing added from without, nothing conferred from elsewhere, but in Him virtue, essence and substance are one and the same. And thus God is what He has, but man does not have these gifts unless he has received them.

Since therefore God is just and justice itself, merciful and mercy itself, kind and kindness itself, man can be just, but cannot be justice; can be merciful, but cannot be mercy; can be kind, but cannot be kindness—because he has these things not by nature but by bounty. For example, He is gold, but man can be seen to be a gilded vessel; and that is grace in man which is nature in God, and that is created in the one which in the other is proved to be unbegotten. And therefore, according to this reasoning, man rather appears in a twofold state, in whom these things are so grafted that they are often separated and taken away.

They err, therefore, who think that righteousness and the other virtues of the soul are its substance—without which the soul can nevertheless somehow subsist with vital vigour in its own nature, without which even the devil is known to remain in his own nature. For they are plainly found to be added, since they are stripped off when faults intervene. But the will alone and immortality—which is implanted even in the wicked—is not taken away, although the dignity and blessedness of immortality can be taken away. As far, therefore, as pertains to freedom of will and to immortality, even the wicked can have the image of God, albeit discoloured by themselves and in themselves; but the likeness none can have except the good.

Since these things are so, since men were endowed with the image and likeness of God, so that many even merited to be called the sons of God, it behoves us to touch briefly on yet a few examples—how many before the Law of the letter, being taught by the law of nature, which is, as we have said, the first grace of God, entered the vestibules of salvation, to be led through Christ to the very inner chambers of life.

But Seth also, substituted in the place of Abel by the likeness of his character and merits—whence could he have rejected the profane practices of his brother, whence could he have chosen the better things, unless understanding and reason had directed him into the right way, under whose guidance he transmitted holy traditions and praiseworthy disciplines as a kind of hereditary gift to posterity, so that through many ages they were reckoned by the name of angels or sons of God? Who would doubt that his countless families, pleasing to God, endowed with freedom of will, were saved even from among the Gentiles—of whom a very few, yet illustrious and perfect, are brought forth in the sacred oracles for the enlightenment of the world?

Whence could Enoch have walked with God or pleased God, unless the law poured into his inward parts had enlightened him by a secret teaching so greatly that, savouring nothing earthly, he was wonderfully caught away by God as He took him from the earth? He who by the merit of faith in the first age of that world surpasses the rest, taught that faith itself had been handed to him together with the law of nature, as we read: 'By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death; for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.'

Unless He were sought by a voluntary devotion and intention, He would not confer a reward on man; unless He had bestowed on him something of his own whereby he might please Him. But when he says, 'for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God,' there is no doubt that first the life is examined, and thus the election follows. In the persuasion of predestination the error that creeps in will be easily turned aside if the preceding cause is asked. He becomes therefore a rewarder to them that seek Him: with great crime is He wanting to him who seeks not, who gave whereby He might be sought. What kind of law and how great a one man received from God at the first creation, the perfect righteousness of Noah also declared, because he, a follower, cultivated the general gifts of faith by a special zeal for virtues in himself.

In whose time, when all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth, the condemnation would not have followed unless transgression, proceeding from the will of man, had gone before. As therefore fault merits punishment, so punishment attests fault, which is inflicted according to the equity of the Governor. But when the divine word says, 'All flesh had corrupted its way,' it imputes the iniquities of that time not to an imposed determination, but to voluntary depravity. And so beyond doubt the heavenly dispensation would not have given the law of the letter, unless transgression, carried on even to the wrath of the flood, had interrupted the law of nature. And therefore this law of Moses, which is believed to be the first, is already the second.

That the work of the natural law was written in the hearts of men, the most blessed bishop Augustine also sets forth in a most learned discourse, thus saying: 'Both run together at once in this channel and torrent of the human race—the evil which is drawn from the parent, and the good which is bestowed by the Creator.' Likewise: 'For no man's vice is so contrary to nature as to blot out even the last traces of nature. For hence it is that even the impious think of eternal things, and establish, even in the present age, laws to be praised, and rightly reprove and rightly praise many things in the morals of men. By what rules, pray, do they judge, if not by natural ones, in which they see how each ought to live, even if they themselves do not live in the same way?'

This the Apostle also more evidently attests to the Romans, saying: 'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of those men who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which is known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse; because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.'

'For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man.' For unless the will had departed from the law of God, impiety would not have felt the wrath of God. And when he says, 'because that which is known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shewed it unto them,' he evidently declares that through the inner teaching inscribed on the pages of the mind the knowledge of God ought to have been manifest to them, and that through the magnificence of the creature the Creator could be known. For they would not be without excuse before God, unless both from without and from within they had had a store for perceiving the truth—the Apostle adding: 'because,' he says, 'when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.'

He condemns the impious, therefore, even on account of the understanding which they abused, and accuses their unrighteousness as consisting in the contempt of the deity. But what else did the vast overflowing of the famous flood assert but the free will of the human race, through the guilt of a condemned world? And thus the perfect righteousness of Noah both showed and condemned the voluntary errors of that age, as we read: 'By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not yet seen, moved with fear prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.' Why did he condemn the world? Because the wickedness of the world neglected to follow the example of righteousness.

And so he accuses the guilt of the disobedient, and he who pleased by obedience proves that others could nonetheless have pleased by zeal. Certainly a fatal constitution had no place in that age. For because a universal transgression had gone before, a universal condemnation followed. How do you say that one is taken up and another left? See how, apart from the family of the just, the whole world, compelled by iniquity, is destroyed. That therefore which you assert—a special decree—is excluded by the universal judgment; and he who is condemned for wickedness is convicted of having been able to do good. X. CONCERNING THAT WHICH THEY ASSERT: THAT THE LAW OF NATURE PERISHED IN THE FIRST MAN AND WAS NOT IN FORCE THROUGH HIS DESCENDANTS UNTIL THE COMING OF THE SAVIOUR.

But you say that natural goods are not to be commemorated, because it is manifest that before the coming of Christ the Gentiles in no way pertained to salvation. He who denies that nature ought to be praised in its own goods surely does not know that the very Author of nature is He who is the Author of grace. He who most imprudently denies this, denies the good of nature apart from the work of God, and supposes it to be either a divinity, as he reckons, or fate. But since He Himself is the Creator who is the Restorer, one and the same is blessed in the praise of both works, one and the same is celebrated in the proclamation of both works. Rightly therefore do I assert the gift of both things, because I know that I owe to Him that I was born, to whom I owe that I was reborn.

And therefore I will not deny the gifts of the Creator merely because I lost them, but I will not equate the former with what follows, because I have received them restored manifoldly for the better. I will extol the benefits of the Creator, but I will beyond measure prefer those of the Redeemer. Nor even in this shall I seem incautious, if I profess that sometimes, in our disposings—not indeed in the beginnings of our life, but at least in the middle—our will, God so ordering, precedes the special graces that come from an added bounty. Whether it be so, let us ask the sacred oracles. We read in the Gospel the Lord saying: 'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' and again: 'Wilt thou be made whole?' You see that the gift of salvation is not bestowed unless first the desire of the will is asked.

But also when one comes to baptism, the will of him who approaches is first inquired into, that the grace of the One who regenerates may follow. And in the centurion Cornelius, because the will preceded the grace, therefore grace also anticipated regeneration. Nothing here, as I think, smacks of presumption, since I unceasingly assert this very thing, that I owe to God the will itself—especially since in all its motions I refer to the work of grace both the first beginnings of the inception and the final consummation. Abraham also, coming forth from the midst of the Gentiles, is not only called with all his household to salvation, but is even made the father of many nations by the testimony of Truth itself. It is of God's goodness that he is called; of his own will, that he readily obeys.

Job also, without liberty of soul, could not have withstood the enemy pressing upon him, but he joined greatness of heart with the help of his Protector. And thus the justice of the Rewarder revealed the devotion of the combatant. In the spiritual war, the conflict seems to pertain to man's labour just as the outcome is referred to God. That Job's friends too came from among the Gentiles, the time before the Law was yet promulgated shows; and while the same Job is recorded to have interceded for them at the Lord's command and to have been heard, to these also, still living in heathenism, salvation is undoubtedly conferred. Rahab too was so much of the Gentile nation that she prefigured the type of the Church to be gathered from the Gentiles.

She too was received into salvation, with all her house, by a working faith, concerning whom we read: 'By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not.' Whence are the unbelievers here, though placed outside the Law, accused, unless because they were unwilling to keep the law of nature, to which faith is joined? Whence is unbelief laid to their charge, unless because the capacity for believing was ready at hand? And so the principle of free will brings it about that the believer is rewarded and the unbeliever condemned. We read in the book of Genesis: 'For the sins of the Amorites are not yet full.'

The Lord foretells that the sons of Israel are to be brought low in the land of Egypt, and thence, in order to destroy the impious nations and to obtain the promised dwellings, to be led forth amid signs and wonders; yet He testifies that this cannot come to pass before the peoples whom He was about to hand over to them make room for the deserved scourges by the magnitude of their mounting sins, and by the mass of their consummated iniquity compel the hand of the utmost affliction to be stretched out against them. Where a multiplication of sins is awaited, the depravity of their wills is being convicted. He who imposes a sentence in accord with equity upon a Gentile absolved from the precept of the Law, thereby convicts that the law of nature had been trampled underfoot; and at the same time the long-suffering of Him who upholds justice is shown to make manifest the justice of Him who condemns.

For no one who purposes to punish on the ground of predestination allows a delay out of moderation. 'Not yet,' He says, 'are the sins of the Amorites filled up.' While the cause of their destruction is recalled to lie in the fullness of their sins, the odious notion of a fixed necessity is taken away. In this passage recognize the power of the divine patience. The people of Israel, who are to be set free and to overthrow the impious nations, are meanwhile held in servitude until the iniquity of the nations is filled up. So long does the wrath of judgment defer its vengeance, until the measure of sin grows to overflowing, so that, goodness and severity running together, under one and the same time the deliverance of the son may be wrought on the one hand, and on the other the crushing of the enemy.

AGAINST WHAT THEY SAY: THAT BEFORE THE TIME OF GRACE THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ONE GOD WAS NOT GRANTED TO THE GENTILES. They wallow in a vast abyss of ignorance who say that the Gentiles could not have had knowledge of the one God before the coming of the Saviour, whereas the Apostle asserts that the Maker of the world could be known through the magnificence of His own workmanship, saying thus: 'What is known of God is manifest among them. For His invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made; His eternal power also and divinity, so that they are inexcusable.'

How can you call those excusable on the ground that they were strangers to the heavenly gifts, whom God declares to be inexcusable precisely because they are proved to have abused what they received, and could without difficulty have known the sublimity of the Craftsman, had they but questioned His work? This is far from all reason and devoid of piety: that man should be thought only recently instructed for the knowing of God, to whom the whole world from the beginning of things is a witness. And therefore in the same epistle the Apostle says: 'For when the Gentiles, who have not the Law, do by nature the things of the Law.' Let it not then be believed that he was imbued by some recent teaching for the grasping of God's law, who received that which he has by nature in the very condition of the first man.

'They changed,' says the Apostle, 'the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things.' While the imprudent man venerates things cast off and unworthy, he thereby professes that he ought by all means to have worshipped worthier objects; and while he adores wood and stone, it lay ready to hand for him to have had the sense to adore the Creator of things earthly and heavenly. For while a man proves that something must be worshipped, that very understanding of worshipping points out the guilt of the Creator neglected. For how did he possess the sense of religion? Without doubt he would have found God, had he been willing to apply the earnestness of seeking, since the Lord says: 'Seek and you shall find.' For when the human mind has opened its eyes to see, at once the light that is sought presents itself to the one who desires it.

And therefore the law implanted within taught reverence, but negligence and obstinacy did not deserve to find the truth. And for that reason, while the heavenly creature prostrates itself before dead idols and senseless figures, it inflicts an injury not only upon its Maker, but also upon its own created self, and it afflicts itself with disgraceful outrages, forgetful of its own nobility, and from the very error receives the penalty of error, as the Apostle says: 'And receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was fitting. And even as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense.' This rebellious sense, corrupted of its own accord, was not violently taken away.

'Even as,' he says, 'they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense.' He who is forsaken for antecedent causes is not oppressed by fate, but reproved by judgment. But if you ask whence sin came to untaught nations in that inborn savagery — whence but through the movement of the soul and the consent of the mind? Cattle, indeed, and brute animals are wholly free from sin, because they are ignorant of discernment and devoid of reason. You make man worse than a beast. For why do you leave sin to him from whom you take away free will? Or if you subject him to sin, do not deprive him of judgment. Let not iniquity, then, lie to itself. He knows what He gave to man in secret, the Discerner of secrets.

And therefore when anyone is rebuked and condemned by Him for an evil deed, he is convicted of having been able to do good. Great, then, is the power of the soul in either direction, since it is both put to shame over what is honourable and put to shame over what is dishonourable. And therefore it is said through the prophet: 'His eyelids question the sons of men; the Lord questions the just and the impious.' Why does my Judge, being born, question me about sin, if what I transgress is of His own determining? And so He who fashioned the hearts of men one by one, the secret Examiner, questions the ways of men and the deserts of their consciences. But if you should also examine yourself — whenever you have wished to turn aside to the left hand — did not your anxious conscience warn you not to sin?

Did not a sad thought, like a hidden censor, chastise you? And thus men cannot hide from themselves, since their conscience bears witness to them, and their thoughts among themselves accuse or even defend them. Amid these things, if you ask where the freedom of choice is set, where the will of man is established — where, if not in the understanding, in reason, and in wisdom? Since this is so, you will first have to deny wisdom to man, to take away his reason, before you can strip him of free will. Wherefore, whenever the soul, captive within its own dwelling, meditates some misdeed, the secret places of its thoughts cry out against it, its own inward duties forbid it; but the habit of sinning withdraws the strength to resist.