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Thus man, made upright and fashioned and formed to the image of his God according to reason and understanding, received a law by not transgressing which he would be blessed, since he had free will, so that he could be good if he willed — yet not indeed without the grace of God by which that very will was governed, that it might will; and nevertheless it was in his power to forsake that grace when he willed. Because he willed and sinned, for this cause also he would deservedly be damned forever, and his whole stock be punished perpetually with the transgressing angels, unless grace should come to his aid through Jesus Christ our Lord.
For His death set the human race free from the power of the devil, to whom by a certain justice of God it had been handed over to possess, and he ruled over them as over the children of disobedience, as the Apostle says (Eph. V, 6). Therefore the death of Christ, which He underwent without sin, bestowed life upon the sinner. The Only-begotten of God took upon Himself man, and the Word was made flesh, He who was to fulfil the office of mediator between God and men: so that, because through free will we were quite unable to return to God, through God made man we might be able to return. Through this mediator, slain by the devil without cause, the devil himself, the author of death, lost those whom that same mediator judged by a hidden judgment. CHAPTER X.
Let not man therefore glory in his own merits, but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (II Cor. X, 17). For what has he that he has not received? and if he has received it, why does he glory as though he had not received it (I Cor. IV, 7)? For the Lord Himself says thus: If the Son shall make you free, then shall you be free indeed (John VIII, 36). Our liberation lies in His choosing, is set in His will. For wrath is in His indignation, and life in His will (Ps. XXIX, 6 [Vulg. XXIX,6]), says the Psalmist. Whence, that the guilty is condemned, let him reckon it to his own merits; that he is set free, to the grace of the Redeemer. Nor do we say this, that the human race has lost free will. For it has, before it is set free by the grace of the Saviour, an inclination toward evil, not toward good.
Wherefore free will itself is set free by the grace of God, that it may will and be able to do good. For thus one of the Fathers says (Augustine, Enchiridion, ch. 32), that the grace of God goes before the unwilling that he may will, and follows after the willing that he may not will in vain. And so man, before he is faithful, has free will unto evil; the faithful man has free will also unto good, freed, that is, by the grace of God. Not without desert indeed, that we may receive punishment for an evil work, and life eternal for a good one. CHAPTER XI. The grace, therefore, which the first man had before sin, and the grace by which men are now redeemed from the condemned mass of sin, a certain one, distinguishing them, speaks thus: The first is that a man should have righteousness if he will;
the second, therefore, is more powerful, by which it even comes about that he wills, and wills so greatly and loves with such ardour, that by the will of the spirit he overcomes the lust of the flesh which craves things contrary. Nor indeed was that first grace a small thing, by which the very power of free will was displayed: since man was so helped that without this help he could not persevere in the good, but this help he could forsake if he willed. But this latter grace is so much the greater, that it is too little for man through it to recover his lost liberty; too little, in short, that without it he cannot even lay hold of the good, or persevere in the good if he will, unless it be also brought about that he wills (Augustine, De Correptione et Gratia, ch. 11).
What then is first in this grace but faith, which is to lead us to sight, namely that we may see what we believe? This faith, too, man will not receive unless he has been baptized in the name of the Trinity: so that, made faithful, he may know what and whence he should ask, seek, and knock, that he may be able to find, as the Lord admonishes in the Gospel: Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Matt. VII, 7). None are brought in but the faithful, unless they have been baptized in the name of the Trinity. Yet not all who are baptized as faithful shall be saved: for truly many heresies glory in this baptism of the Trinity, and seem to be baptized in the same manner as the Catholic Church;
but they are held in great error, while they rend the unity of the faith and refuse to be in communion with the whole world, and on this account they shall deservedly be damned. It profits them nothing therefore to be dipped in the name of the Trinity, who strive by rash presumption to divide that indivisible name of the Godhead. But when, pricked in heart, they return to the Catholic Church with humble piety, the baptism which they have already received is not repeated in them, but they are reconciled through the laying on of hands of the Catholic Church. For thus is kept that sentence of the Lord: Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt.
XXVIII, 19), so that, although they be baptized outside the Church, or indeed within the Church by an evil and perverse priest according to this rule, it is in no way repeated in them. For the faith which works by love is possessed by the holy Catholic Church, which faith heretics are shown in no way to possess: because in truth faith alone does not suffice, unless, believing God, you love God and obey His precepts. To obey His precepts is not to do evil and to do good, to fight against the devil, who strives at every moment to hinder our course as it tends toward God. Whence, according to the Apostle, as a roaring lion he goes about seeking whom he may devour (I Pet. V, 8): whom we must resist bravely in the faith. CHAPTER XII.
And although, so long as we live mortally in this world, we cannot be without sin, yet let us not be entangled in any grave crimes — lest we return to his service and, being made his vessels, he begin again to dwell in us; what things are criminal sins, both the divine Scripture and the laws of the world publicly punish; but your own conscience too, which does not wish to suffer from another what it does, is not ignorant of them; yet if perchance after baptism we have been involved in certain crimes, let us not be slow to do penance, and with a contrite heart and body to ask pardon of God. For those who think they can commit sins with impunity, while perhaps they give some alms to the poor, are much deceived.
For they know not that the first work of mercy is to offer oneself to God, and so to show mercy to another. For thus says the Scripture: Have mercy on thy own soul, pleasing God (Ecclus. XXX, 24); and again: He that is evil to himself, to whom will he be good (Ecclus. XIV, 5)? Alms therefore are to be given, but first vices are to be forsaken. They differ much, therefore, from those who have kept their garment white, who, being such as when they were reborn, by the Lord's help persevere thus even to the end of their departure: for whom daily prayer suffices to loose the least faults which creep in within this mortal body; from which the Apostle longs to be freed, saying: Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. VII, 24–25). For the Lord also in the Gospel (Matt. XIII, 23) shows three fertilities of the earth, that is, He demonstrated three grades of the good in the Church: thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Whence also Noah's ark, which signified the Church, was made with two and three chambers; signifying, as we have said, the three grades or orders which the expositors of the Church have referred to the married, the continent, and the virgins. The thirtyfold, namely, to the married, the sixtyfold to the continent, the hundredfold to the virgins. So also the Catholic Church is constituted in these grades, so that, although there are three grades, there are nevertheless many differences of merits.
For neither do all virgins equally receive the reward of the kingdom of heaven, nor all the continent, nor all the married: but each one shall receive his own reward, says the Apostle, according to his own labour (I Cor. III, 8). And by how much more one has been obedient to God than another, by so much more of reward shall he receive. And what shall this reward or prize be, unless God Himself shall be the prize of virtue? A certain one has said: He who gave virtue, who gave victory to those who strive, He without doubt shall be the crown. By which we understand that by so much more shall one see God in that life than another, by how much more he has loved Him in this life, and been obedient to His precepts. CHAPTER XIII.
But even in the very flesh of the rising dead there will be many differences of glory, as the Apostle says: One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in glory; so also shall be the resurrection of the dead (I Cor. XV, 41–42). Therefore whatever bodies either fire has consumed, or beast devoured, or water swallowed up, in that moment of time and twinkling of an eye shall rise again, each one in the sex in which he died; the male, then, in the masculine, and the female in the feminine. But that the dead rise, the Lord says in the Gospel: Have you not read what the Lord says to Moses at the bush: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Luke XX, 37)? And adding, He joins:
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to Him (Luke XX, 38); and again: Then all, He says, who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they shall rise: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment (John V, 28–29). For also elsewhere (Matt. XXV, 46), numbering the works of mercy, reproving the good and the evil, He says that these shall go into everlasting punishment. The good also shall everlasting joy receive, where with their God they shall reign without end, and, secure in their stability, nothing unseemly shall delight them. For wherever their spirit shall be, it shall be forthwith in a new heaven and a new earth. But the wicked eternal fire shall receive, and shall torment them forever.
Where their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be extinguished (Mark IX, 44). And therefore, dearly beloved, we must be diligent, and continually implore the mercy of God, that we may live soberly, piously, and justly in this world, so that we may be able to attain to the kingdom of heaven.