At the falling of a plentiful shower, the cultivated and tamed turf is multiplied with the offspring of shoots, but the uncultivated and rough ground is filled with useless weeds and thorns; and thus one and the same rain works two things diverse and contrary, according to the diligence or the neglect of cultivation, as we read: 'For the earth that drinks in the rain often coming upon it, and brings forth herbage useful to those by whom it is tilled, receives blessing from God; but that which brings forth thorns and briers is reprobate and near to a curse, whose end is for burning.' Recognize the earth, under one and the same rain, now producing thorns and briers, now bringing forth fruits fit for blessings.
In the same way, while the mercy of God waits and spares, the obedient man is amended, the impenitent man is hardened. II. THAT THE FOREKNOWLEDGE OF GOD DOES NOT VIOLENTLY FORCE HUMAN WILLS EITHER TO JUST OR TO CONTRARY DEEDS. They misunderstand the foreknowledge and predestination of God, maintaining that from it the cause of human acts arises. First we ought to perceive what depends upon or proceeds from what. It is not that a man is going to do whatever he does because the authority of the Foreknower is going to compel him; rather, the liberty and will of the foreknown man supplies to God the quality of foreknowing. Therefore no cause of sinning is imposed on man from the violence of foreseeing; rather, from men's deserts that are to follow arises the order of foreknowing.
And so the general foreknowledge, which abides in God concerning the state of the whole world, is born of his power; but concerning the state of man, the qualities and kinds of foreknowing are borrowed from the inspection of the human act. But amid these things you answer God and say: 'O Lord, how was I able to lay hold of good, whom you foreknew would be evil in the future?' It is not so. It is one thing that God wills, another that God permits. He wills the good, then, and permits the evil; he foreknows both. By just goodness he assists; by the just liberty of free will he permits. It is of his own that he gives grace, of yours that he foreknows offense. And hence it is that he is found ceaselessly to forbid, toward the wicked, the very things he foresaw.
He would never command that the depraved pursuits of men be turned toward better things, if he knew that they could not be changed; and therefore the divine providence will consistently answer you: 'O man, I did not make you such as I foreknew you would be. I formed you good according to the law of my justice, and I admonished you not to follow evil; I foresaw you as evil because of the iniquity of your wills that was to follow.' Where it is not compulsion but consent to sinning that is caught in the complaint, the fault lies not with the Author but with the transgressor. 'If, O man,' he says, 'you look to your Maker, you could have been good; if to the Foreknower, it is you who compelled me, by the order of your deeds, to foreknow evil of you.' But you turn it back again and say:
'The foreknowledge and predestination of human acts and deserts prefixes and stirs up their causes.' It is not so. Rather, the kind of foreknowledge is derived from the origin of the human will. But that some are led by the depravity of their own thought and reckon that their acts are begun from foreknowledge — this proceeds from a vice proper to their own mind and from an incorrigible obstinacy, while they pretend to struggle against their passions and think they cannot do what they will not to do. They call the custom of an unchangeable evil a 'law' of transgressing. But still you say that men's works and wills begin from the nod and impulse of heavenly foreknowledge. It is not so. Rather recognize this: that the foreknowledge of God takes its beginning from the matter of human acts.
What God ought to foreknow and pre-ordain concerning us, so far as it pertains to the future, consists in the advance or the falling-away of a man. Take that example by which the foreknowledge of God turned itself in accordance with human action. To Hezekiah the king, lying sick, death is announced in the sorrowful word of a truthful prophet, proclaimed with this response, so saying: 'Set your house in order, for tomorrow you shall die.' But he, turned to weeping, set his house in order, because he humbled his soul. He acknowledges the prophet indeed to be of proven sanctity, yet despair is driven off by hope: prayer overrules the oracle, entreaty dissolves the fixed decree, faith full of the word overcomes the truth, and the utter infirmity of the weeper conquers the inevitable cause of the announced death.
Human frailty humbles itself, and the divine sentence suffers a certain force, as he says: 'The kingdom of heaven suffers violence.' He would by all means have died, had he not, terrified, made supplication. Choose which you will: either confess that the prefixed necessity was changed, or convict the truth of having lied. III. THAT TO FOREKNOW IS ONE THING, TO PREDESTINE ANOTHER. The Apostle says: 'Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.' To foreknow is one thing, to predestine another. Foreknowledge, then, foreknows the things to be done; afterward predestination describes the things to be repaid. The former foresees merits, the latter pre-ordains rewards. Foreknowledge pertains to power, predestination to justice.
Foreknowledge subsists from another's act, but predestination from its own judgment; the former makes manifest the deed, the latter condemns it; the former is a witness, the latter a judge. When the former has announced the cause, then the latter pronounces the sentence. By foreknowledge the things that are ours are disclosed, by predestination the things that are prepared. And thus, unless foreknowledge has explored, predestination decrees nothing. But the power exercises the office of foreknowledge in the manner of eyes: what has presented itself to sight, this it will see. Is he believed to have committed what he is known merely to have caught sight of?
But since the eyes see, not the things they themselves work within, but the things offered to them from without, if they should perchance behold someone sinning, the outrage will be judged, I think, not of the one seeing but of the one committing it. Thus it will pertain not to the foreknower but to the foreknown. Let every fault, every offense, belong to the transgressor. So too God foresees before a man's day those things which are to be done, not by himself, but by man. And just as existing matter brings it about that the eye's keenness contemplates it, but the eye does not bring it about that the thing to be seen comes into being, so also the foreknowledge of God does not exact that the things which will follow from a man's merits should come to pass, but runs ahead of what is to happen.
And because it is the custom of the sacred oracles to lay open the truth of a matter to be asserted through some adopted likeness — as at times we read the kingdom of heaven compared to a grain of mustard, or to the leaven of the woman in the Gospel, or to a net cast into the sea, and the many such things that there are — so we too, desiring to distinguish future things, gather up the manner of foreknowing by an established pattern. But if to foreknow is to compel, then he who foresees a sinner is himself the cause of the sin? God foreknows adultery — does he therefore inflame the bones and marrow with the fires of obscene lust? God foreknows a murderer — does he himself suggest bestial impulses to the disordered senses, does he himself whet the sword of a bloody mind for the accomplishing of the crime?
He foreknows the impious man — does he therefore himself incite the spirit of the madman to profane sacrifices? Is he, then, to be believed the author of the very things of which he is the avenger? And amid these things, is he to be judged to force toward evil the assent of a captive will, he who did not permit even the devil to compel the unwilling? It is the will that works the offense, it is the will that merits the help. But you say: 'I find where grace alone works without the fellowship of the human will, for in Bethlehem the whole people of the innocents obtains so blessed a death from God's predestination alone.' It is not so. For then perhaps the working would be of grace alone, if the shedding of innocent blood had not intervened.
But if the cause of the innocents was then a single one, why is not all infancy saved there? For from the glory of that time every age of the other sex is excluded. If the power of predestination makes a special condition through individuals, why do all these boys, born at diverse times of days or months, obtain one felicity? But if a common rule of election is exercised in the human race, why is every state of girlhood excepted from this gift? Here, therefore, since the lot of a decree is absent, death is inflicted on the boys through the devil's fury, but the blessedness of death is conferred for God's honor. Therefore predestination did not consign them to death, but the occasion of the cause consecrated them.
This slaughter of the little ones, therefore, was ordained not by the disposition of God, but by the impiety of the enemy. But God, who makes good use even of the evils of men, works out the glory of the slain from the crime of the slayer. The inventor of malice indeed disposes things contrary, but the Author of goodness composes the adverse counsels unto better. IV. AGAINST THIS, THAT THEY SAY: HE IS MERCIFUL TOWARD THOSE WHOM HE ACQUIRES, JUST TOWARD THOSE WHOM HE ABANDONS — WHEREAS HE APPEARS BOTH MERCIFUL TOWARD THE EVIL AND JUST EVEN TOWARD THE GOOD. If God disposes the state of man, as impiety blasphemes, not by equity but by power, then perhaps he who knocked is shut out, and he who did not seek is drawn in.
And thus he will seem to have been neither merciful toward the saved, to whom he did not grant that they should merit mercy by their service, nor can he be reckoned just toward the lost, who are repelled from mercy without any crime of their own. But if both are guilty in nature, then in the one justice will be endangered, who without merit is unworthily chosen, and in the other mercy, who is assigned to perdition without a judgment of sin. For by what mercy is the idle man honored, by what justice is the guiltless man damned? And so, while inexpertly he takes liberty away from man, he is impiously shown to deny justice to God. If you say that he is merciful only in the acquired and just only in the lost, in each person you will abruptly deny both virtues.
For neither will there be equity in the one, if he chooses the unproven, nor goodness in the other, if he destroys the undeserving. But we confess this twin good in the works of God, joined in an inseparable embrace, as we read: 'Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord'; and again: 'The Lord is merciful and just, and our God will have mercy'; and again: 'Merciful and compassionate and just is the Lord.' For he is merciful even toward the lost, who seeks out and invites the erring, who long bears with the delinquent. And just as he makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust, so he has filled both alike with the light of reason, clothed them with the honor of his own image, and called them generally to the grace of redemption.
Was he then not merciful toward the one on whom he heaped so much, whom he will judge for a mercy neglected and lost? Now that other point is of lesser difficulty: that we should teach him to be, toward those acquired, just as well as merciful. Just, I say, even toward those whom he receives when they return, whom he does not forsake when they labor, whom he makes worthy of liberty when they serve faithfully. But the heretic denies that he is merciful toward the evil, because he does not believe that an abundance of salvation was offered to those who slip down into death. Therefore he does not assert him to be just toward the good, because he reckons that nothing was conferred on them for their humble devotion.
He is merciful, then, because he instills into the evil too the understanding of reason and the affection of goodness; just, because he sets before the obedient a reward; just, because he saves no one against his will. And so the Apostle magnificently joins the office of labor to the gift of grace, saying thus: 'The laboring farmer must receive of the fruits.' Behold how, by an admirable exchange, things divine and human are joined together. To obedience belongs the labor, but the fruit of the labor belongs to grace. And again: 'Each one shall receive his own reward according to his own labor,' though the Lord says in the Gospel: 'When you have done these things, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we ought to do.'
Take note that he does not exclude the pursuit of work, but requires the compliance of the worker; nor does he refuse the labor of service, but instills the humility of mind. The vice, therefore, which you most inexpertly think that labor is to be shunned, consists not in the work but in the heart. With all my strength, therefore, I will labor; but whatever I receive of the supernal bounty, I will attribute to grace, not to my own industry; I will call it a benefit, not a wage; I will testify that it is a gift, not a debt — a remuneration, not a repayment. Thus, when we do something out of duty, we can in no way reckon it to God's account, because we are paying what we owe. But do not you begrudge the divine goodness, if the work which was well done by me with its help — or even the graces I have received — I should lose.
In this manner they allow that such men can neither be converted nor healed by the evils that precede. V. AGAINST THIS, THAT THEY SAY: HE WHO PERISHED DID NOT SO MUCH WILL AS WAS UNABLE TO BE SAVED, ACCORDING TO WHAT WE READ: 'AND THEY COULD NOT BELIEVE.' Amid these things, when John the Evangelist records: 'Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah again said: He blinded their eyes and hardened their heart' — in this passage the concluded expression resounds as if a necessity of not believing seemed imposed on them against their will. But that the cause or fault of the unbelief arose from themselves, the order of the reading makes manifest in what follows, saying thus: 'Yet nevertheless even from among the rulers many believed in him, but on account of the Pharisees they did not confess, lest they be cast out of the synagogue.'
'For they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.' Here he indicates plainly, as we also read of Simon, that even to unbelievers the force of belief was conferred, in whom, just as the faculty of believing was present, so the will of confessing was lacking. That they believe is the largess of grace; that they do not accommodate profession to their belief is the wickedness of mind; and there is fulfilled in them: 'But he who has not, even what he has shall be taken from him.' Behold how an admixed malice has depraved the good of the will and of faith, as in another place in the same Gospel the Lord himself says: 'How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory which is from God alone?'
You see, therefore, that just as when the causes are suppressed the truth is hidden, so when they are made manifest the obscurity is removed — the obscurity which in the testimony of Isaiah seems to spread somewhat denser mists, while it asserts that those whom their own wickedness had rendered deaf and blind were blinded by God, lest perchance, with the heart turned to God, they should be healed.
And so, to defer for a little that which Matthew has expressed more openly, let us, in accordance with the very rigor of that discourse which more austerely strikes the reader's hearing from the words of the prophet, inquire more deeply why in this passage the Lord is thought to be unwilling that they should be healed — that is, lest, having received a momentary conversion, they should abuse the benefits conferred; then, when they have been proved to have neglected and rejected what they received, they should relapse into infirmity and spurn the medicine, like that man to whom the Lord himself speaks: 'You are now made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall you.' Take note that the impious man is weighed down by the goodness of health.
Thus Pharaoh is caught insulting the mercy of God, whom, given over to the plagues, as often as he wished to heal him when he came to his senses and turned and humbled himself, so often he found to be worse after the humanity of clemency. Why, I say, does he neglect to heal these men? Assuredly, lest they become like that seed which was sown upon the rocky places — that is, he who for a moment receives the word with joy, who believes for a while and in the time of temptation falls away. What is it to receive a momentary health? It is to believe for a time and, in the time of temptation, through the infidelity of the soul, to depart, and, with a feeble root, to fail at the light heat of temptation.
Let us see whom he attempted to heal and to whom it profited little because of the unbelief that followed. Behold, from that servant in the Gospel, oppressed by great debts and by the languors of the soul, the ten thousand talents which seemed to have been remitted to him are, through the crime of his own malice, exacted with torments added — where it must also be observed how things acquired are lost and benefits already conferred are revoked. But that other man too, having driven the unclean spirit from himself, is said to have been healed for a time, of whom the divine discourse says: 'When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it walks through arid places seeking rest, and finding none. Then it says: I will return to my house, whence I came out.'
'And coming, it finds it empty, swept with brooms and adorned' — that is, emptied of virtues and filled with vanities. 'Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and entering in they dwell there, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.' Behold, one to whom the health conferred did not profit, upon whom, with evils multiplied, a harmful languor pressed and increased. But in another place too, he who, after receiving the knowledge of the truth — that is, after the care of salvation had been conferred on him by the truth — had counted the blood of the covenant, by which he was sanctified — that is, by which he was healed — a polluted thing, is declared by the Apostle's testimony to merit heavier punishments. Thus, therefore, grace is turned into a fault, unless watchfulness follows.
But in these things the Evangelist Matthew, when he refers the thickened heart, the stopped ears, and the closed eyes to the fault of man — as to why they were not healed — taught it with a clearer sense and a more lucid reasoning, when, I say, he says: 'The heart of this people has been thickened, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have closed.' Does it not seem to you that, as if to those asking why, seeing, they do not see, and, hearing, they do not understand, he at once gave the evident reason for the causes on account of which they do not see nor understand? Namely, because they were unwilling to hear and to see — that is, to understand and to obey.
'Because,' he says, 'not all obey the gospel,' 'because all day long he has stretched out his hands to a people that does not believe and contradicts,' as the Lord himself already says: 'I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have spurned me'; and again: 'Because they have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters'; and in the Acts of the Apostles: 'Seeing the crowds,' he says, 'the Jews were filled with zeal, and contradicted the things spoken by Paul, blaspheming the way of the Lord'; and likewise: 'Paul was urgent in the word,' he says, 'testifying to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. But as they contradicted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said: Your blood be upon your own head; I am clean; from now on I will go to the nations.'
'As they contradicted,' he says, 'and blasphemed.' See how the physician offers remedies and the sick man refuses. Their hardness even the blessed Stephen rebukes with equal authority, saying: 'Uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.' Behold why they cannot see: because they resist the Holy Spirit, and with eyes willingly closed by themselves they shut out the light of the truth. As for what follows in the Gospel and says, 'lest perchance they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them' — namely, that they cannot be converted and healed — this is the vice of a hardened heart and the punishment of sin. 'Lest,' he says, 'they be converted and I heal them.'
He does not here deny health to those who desire it, but declares that those who resist do not wish to be healed—that is, that they ought not to be healed. The kindness of the physician is most ready to bestow the remedy, but the intemperance of the sick man refuses it. For whoever thinks it should be understood that God was unwilling to heal them acquits man and condemns the Author. No one, therefore, is excluded from the benefits of God who is first to be judged concerning benefits neglected. VI. WHAT IS MEANT BY WHAT HE SAYS: FOR WHEN THEY HAD NOT YET DONE ANYTHING GOOD OR EVIL. They, however, strive to constrain that meaning of the Apostle within the narrow bounds of a pagan decree, in which he says: 'This is the word of the promise:'
'At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.' And not only this, but Rebecca also, having conceived by one, even by Isaac our father—for when the children were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, 'The elder shall serve the younger,' as it is written, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.'
In these words the impiety of pagan persuasion wishes it to be understood that God, apart from any weighing between evil and good by the examination of one who governs, renders that man worthy of favour and this one of hatred—not by the order of one who rules, but by the right of one who dominates; that He receives that one with zeal and excludes this one by command; and that between two lost men there is no consideration of labour, none of devotion, but the one, while his duties cease, is taken up without reason, the other condemned without discernment. And thus, so long as in neither is there any ground of merit or of fault, the cause of a future judgment is taken away altogether. But if this so unworthy confusion of things is alien even to the sense of the human mind, let us inquire more carefully what befits the divine justice, since the Apostle is discoursing of it.
The teacher set between two peoples, of the Jews and of the Gentiles, when he thus says, 'The elder shall serve the younger,' rejects in the elder the arrogance of Judaea, and chooses in the younger the faith of the Gentiles. And so he draws over himself clouds of ignorance who does not so much accommodate himself with a docile understanding to the Holy Scriptures, as strive violently to drag the Holy Scriptures to his own understanding and presumptuously to apply them, and persuades himself of this according to his own grasp, disregarding the reasoning of what precedes or follows—matters of which the Apostle never intended to speak at all. But if you go back to the beginning of the very chapter under discussion, you will avoid every ambiguity without any difficulty.
If the teacher of the Gentiles had begun to treat of the origin of men, and had said that the whole course of a man's life is predetermined from his origin and subjected more to necessity than committed to free will—on the ground that the Lord of all, according to the beck of His power and by a violent decree, would leave some to perdition and choose others for salvation—then perhaps, as though running along drawn lines, this wicked persuasion might be able to claim this colour.
But since the Apostle weaves together the promises of God and the calling of the Gentiles with examples fetched from further back, and strives in every way to curb the presumption of the Jews, who were swelling wickedly over the works of the Law, he did not set a fatal decree in the origin of the elder brothers, Ishmael or Esau, but in the blessing of Isaac and Jacob he showed the election of the younger people; and therefore he preferred the younger to the elder, not as if by the power of God, but for justice's sake. For he foresaw the impiety of the Jews just as much as the obedience of the Gentiles. Since therefore he says:
'For when they had not yet done anything good or evil, it was said, not of works but of him that calleth, that the elder shall serve the younger'—it was indeed said 'of him that calleth,' yet not with a view to compelling or repelling, but it is plain that it was said with respect to those who would believe and those who would not believe, so that, the divine justice remaining constant, it belongs to the will of man either to refuse or to keep the precepts. When therefore you hear, 'but of him that calleth it was said,' understand one who invites, not one who compels. Likewise when he says, 'not of works,' he asserts that concerning them there were not the works of the Law—which surely had not yet come—but that even before the Law the gifts of the divine mercy and munificence had been in force. 'Not of works,' he says.
You hear that the works of the Law are done away, and you therefore, with a foolish understanding, believe that even those living under the law of grace, some can be saved without works of grace, while others, even with works, are shut out from the gate of salvation by a prohibiting bond of nature and a fatal law. 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.' How is a heavenly sentence, according to the interpreter of a perverse sense, put forth here concerning those not yet born? For one not yet begotten can be neither guilty nor beloved. For one not yet brought into the light merits nothing; but just as their conduct was still laid up for the future, so the offence given to Him who foreknows the future is foretold, the future election is foretold. For as the divine providence knows how to judge concerning deeds done, so it does not prejudge concerning deeds still to be done.
Let no one therefore suppose that to the brothers not yet born a necessity of diverse merits had been fixed, since Malachi the prophet recalls this concerning them after the warfare of life was over, and pronounces the divine judgment concerning their past state with manifest equity: 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.' What wonder is it if justice loves innocence and rejects iniquity—justice before which even things future are already done? But as to the fact that the younger is set before the elder by law, and that Jacob is loved while his brother is passed over, from this an obscurity arises for the somewhat slower, in that they think the testimony of love or hatred was uttered while the brothers were not yet born, when in fact the evident causes for which the one displeased and the other pleased are suppressed.
In these two, then, no rights of nature are prefixed to men, but the ordinances of justice are declared concerning the faith of the Gentiles and the unbelief of the Jews. For in this place, according to the letter, it is not specifically the persons of the brothers that are described, but the causes and mysteries of things, the Lord saying: 'Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided from thy belly.' But if it were a matter of a law fixed at origin, what need was there that he should insert the age of the elder and the younger—a thing which did not pertain to the matter—except because among the lineage of the Jews the younger is always preferred to the elder in the calling of the two peoples?
Yet in this diversity of parties, many even of the reprobate Jews are chosen, and some of the elect Gentiles are reproved, so that you may understand that in each people the just Judge observes not a decree, but merits. But you say: 'When they had not yet done anything good or evil, they are already assigned to predetermined portions.' What wonder is it if He whose acts He foresaw, He also foresignified their ends; and therefore, just as it was certain that they would order the course of their living by their own choice, so, according to God's power, they are foreknown, and according to His justice they are preordained? All this is foretold concerning them, not predetermined. In Jacob, then, the faithful people is described; in Esau the unbelieving is designated; concerning both of whom He thus says: