1. 1. We know, of course, that the Apostle said in his Letter to the Philippians: To write the same things to you is not irksome to me, and for you it is safe (Phil 3:1). Yet the same Apostle, writing to the Galatians, when he saw that he had done enough among them in what he discerned to be necessary for them through the ministry of his word, said: From now on let no one give me trouble (Gal 6:17); or, as it reads in many manuscripts, let no one be a bother to me. But I, although I confess that I am troubled that so many and such clear words of the divine Scriptures by which the grace of God is preached (a grace that is no grace at all if it is given according to our merits) meet with no yielding, nonetheless so love your zeal and your brotherly love, my dearest sons Prosper and Hilary, by which you so desire that men such as these should not go astray that, even after so many books of mine on this matter, or my letters, you still wish me to write further about it—I love it so much that I cannot say how much; and I dare not say that I love it as much as I ought. And so, here I write back to you, and although I am no longer present with you, yet even through you I am still doing what I believed I had done enough about.

1. 2. For having considered your letters, I seem to see that those brothers, for whom you bear a devout concern lest they hold the poet's sentiment, in which it was said, Let each be his own hope (Virgil, Aeneid 11.309), and so fall into what was said not poetically but prophetically, Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man (Jer 17:5)—those brothers, I say, are to be dealt with in the way the Apostle dealt with those to whom he said: And if in anything you think differently, this too God will reveal to you (Phil 3:15).

For they are still clouded over in the question of the predestination of the saints; but they have the means whereby, if they think otherwise in any part of it, God may reveal this too to them, if they walk in that to which they have come. This is why the Apostle, when he had said, If in anything you think differently, this too God will reveal to you, added: Nevertheless, let us walk in that to which we have come (Phil 3:15-16).

Now these brothers of ours, for whom your devout love is anxious, have come to believe, with the Church of Christ, that the human race is born liable to the sin of the first man, and that no one is set free from this evil except through the righteousness of the second man. They have come also to confess that the wills of men are anticipated by the grace of God, and they agree that no one is sufficient of himself either to begin or to complete any good work. Holding fast, then, to what they have come to, they are very far set apart from the error of the Pelagians. Accordingly, if they walk in these truths and pray to him who gives understanding, then, if in anything about predestination they think otherwise, he will reveal this too to them; yet let us also expend on them the affection of love and the ministry of the word, just as he grants whom we have asked, that in this letter we may say to them what would be fitting and useful for them. For how do we know whether our God may not wish to bring this about through this service of ours, by which we serve them in the free love of Christ?

2. 3. First, then, we must show that the faith by which we are Christians is a gift of God—if indeed we can do this more carefully than we have already done in so many and such great volumes. But now I see that an answer must be given to those who say that the divine testimonies which we have brought forward on this matter avail only to this: that we should know we have the faith itself from ourselves, but its increase from God—as if faith were not given to us by him, but only increased in us by him, on the merit by which it began from us. They do not then withdraw from that opinion which Pelagius himself, at the episcopal judgment in Palestine, as the Proceedings attest, was compelled to condemn: "that the grace of God is given according to our merits"; if it does not pertain to the grace of God that we have begun to believe, but rather that which is added to us on account of this, that we may believe more fully and more perfectly. For in this way we give to God the beginning of our faith first, so that there may be repaid to us both its increase and whatever else we faithfully ask.

2. 4. But against this, why do we not rather listen to: Who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him? For from him and through him and in him are all things (Rom 11:35-36)? The very beginning of our faith, then—from what is it, if not from him? For it is not that this one thing is excepted while the rest are from him; rather, from him and through him and in him are all things. But who would say that one who has already begun to believe merits nothing from him in whom he has believed?

From this it comes about that the rest are said to be added to one who already merits, by a divine repayment—and thus that the grace of God is given according to our merits, which is the very thing that Pelagius, when it was charged against him, condemned in order that he himself might not be condemned. Whoever, then, wishes to avoid this damnable opinion on every side, let him truly understand what the Apostle says: It has been granted to you for Christ's sake not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him (Phil 1:29).

He shows that both are a gift of God, because he said both were granted. Nor did he say: That you may believe in him more fully and more perfectly; but: that you may believe in him. Nor did he say that he himself had obtained mercy that he might be more faithful, but that he might be faithful (See 1 Cor 7:25), because he knew that he had not given to God first the beginning of his own faith and had its increase repaid to him by God, but that he had been made faithful by the one by whom he was also made an apostle.

For the very beginnings of his faith are also recorded (See Acts 9), and they are most widely known through their familiar reading in the Church. For when he had been turned away from the faith he was laying waste, and was its fierce opponent, he was suddenly converted to it by a more powerful grace—the one converting him to whom, since he was to do this very thing, it had been said through the prophecy: You will turn and bring us to life (Ps 85:6 (84:7))—so that not only was he made willing to believe from being unwilling, but also, from a persecutor, he suffered persecution in defense of the faith he had persecuted. For it had been granted to him by Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.

2. 5. And so, commending this grace, which is not given according to any merits but produces all good merits, he says: Not that we are competent to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5). Let those attend here and weigh these words who think that the beginning of faith is from us and the completing of faith from God. For who does not see that thinking comes before believing? No one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed. For although certain thoughts fly ahead of the will to believe ever so swiftly, ever so rapidly, and that will then follows so closely as to accompany them, as it were, in the tightest union, it is nonetheless necessary that all things which are believed be believed by a thinking that goes before. And indeed believing itself is nothing other than to think with assent. For not everyone who thinks believes, since many think precisely in order not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks, and in believing thinks, and in thinking believes. As regards, then, religion and devotion (of which the Apostle was speaking), if we are not competent to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5), then surely we are not competent to believe anything as of ourselves—which we cannot do without thinking—but our sufficiency by which we begin to believe is from God. Therefore, just as no one is sufficient of himself to begin or to complete any good work whatever—which these brothers, as your letters indicate (Hilary, Letter 226, 2), agree to be true, so that in every good work, both in beginning and in completing it, our sufficiency is from God—so no one is sufficient of himself either to begin or to complete faith, but our sufficiency is from God: for faith, if it is not thought, is nothing; and we are not competent to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.

2. 6. We must beware, brothers beloved of God, lest a man exalt himself against God when he says that he does what God promised. Was not the faith of the gentiles promised to Abraham, and did he not, giving glory to God, most fully believe that what he promised, he is also able to do (Rom 4:20-21)? He, then, brings about the faith of the gentiles, who is able to do what he promised. Moreover, if God works our faith, acting in a wondrous way in our hearts so that we believe, is it to be feared that he cannot do the whole, and so a man claims for himself the first part of it, in order to deserve to receive the last part from him?

See whether anything else is brought about in this way except that the grace of God is given, in whatever manner, according to our merits, and thus grace is no longer grace. For in this arrangement it is repaid as a debt, not given freely: for it is owed to the believer that his faith should be increased by the Lord, and that the reward of the faith begun should be faith increased; and no attention is paid, when this is said, to the fact that this reward is reckoned to believers not according to grace but according to debt.

But why the whole should not be attributed to man, so that he who was able to institute in himself what he did not have should himself increase what he instituted—this I cannot see at all, except that there is no resisting the most manifest divine testimonies by which faith too, from which the beginning of devotion is taken, is shown to be a gift of God. Such is this: that God has apportioned to each one the measure of faith (Rom 12:3); and this: Peace to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 6:23); and various others.

Unwilling, then, to fight against these so clear testimonies, and yet willing that what he believes should be from himself in himself, a man as it were makes an arrangement with God, claiming for himself a part of faith and leaving a part to him; and, what is more arrogant, he takes the first part for himself and gives the following part to him, and in that which he says belongs to both, he makes himself the earlier and God the later.

3. 7. That devout and humble teacher did not think this way—I mean the most blessed Cyprian, who said: We must boast in nothing, since nothing is ours (Cyprian, To Quirinus 3.4). And to show this, he brought forward the Apostle as a witness, who says: What do you have that you have not received? But if you have also received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (1 Cor 4:7). By this testimony especially I too was convicted, when I was likewise erring, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift of God but is in us from ourselves, and that through it we obtain the gifts of God by which we may live temperately and justly and devoutly in this world (Titus 2:12). For I did not think that faith was anticipated by the grace of God, so that through it there might be given to us what we usefully asked for; rather, I thought we could not believe unless the proclamation of the truth went before, but that to consent to the gospel preached to us was our own doing and was in us from ourselves.

This error of mine some little works of mine, written before my episcopate, sufficiently show. Among them is the one you mentioned in your letters (Hilary, Letter 226, 3), where there is an exposition of certain propositions from the Letter to the Romans. Indeed, when I was reviewing all my little works and pursuing that review in writing—a work of which I had already finished two books before I had taken up your fuller writings—when in the first volume I came to reviewing this book, I spoke of it thus:

Again, discussing, I said, what God chose in one not yet born, to whom he said that the elder would serve him, and what he likewise reprobated in that same elder not yet born—concerning whom, on this account, the prophetic testimony is cited, though uttered long afterward: 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated' (Mal 1:2-3; Rom 9:13)—I carried the reasoning to the point of saying: 'God did not, then, choose anyone's works in his foreknowledge, the works that he himself was going to give; but in his foreknowledge he chose faith, so that the one he foreknew would believe in him, him he chose, to whom he would give the Holy Spirit, so that by doing good works he might also attain eternal life.' I had not yet inquired more carefully, nor had I yet found, what the election of grace is, of which the same Apostle says: 'A remnant has been saved through the election of grace' (Rom 11:5)—an election which is certainly not grace if any merits precede it, lest what is given be repaid as something owed to merits rather than given according to grace.

Accordingly, what I then went on to say: 'For the same Apostle says: It is the same God who works all things in all' (1 Cor 12:6), 'but it is nowhere said: God believes all things in all'; and then I added: 'What we believe, therefore, is ours; but the good we do is his who gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe'—this I would surely not say, if I already knew that faith itself too is found among the gifts of God which are given in the same Spirit.

Both, then, are ours on account of the choice of the will, and yet both have been given through the Spirit of faith and love. For not love alone, but, as it is written, 'Love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ' (Eph 6:23). And what I said a little later: 'For it is ours to believe and to will; but his to give to those who believe and will the power of doing good through the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts'—this is indeed true, but by the same rule; and both are his, because he prepares the will; and both are ours, because it does not come about except by our willing. And so what I also said afterward: 'Because we cannot even will unless we are called, and when, after the call, we have willed, our willing and our running are not enough unless God both supplies strength to those who run and brings them where he calls,'

and then I added: 'It is clear, therefore, that the good we do is not of the one who wills nor of the one who runs, but of God who shows mercy' (Rom 9:16)—this is altogether most true. But I discussed too little about the call itself, which is made according to God's purpose: for it is not such for all who are called, but only for the elect. And so what I said a little later: 'For just as in those whom God has chosen it is not works but faith that begins the merit, so that by God's gift they may do good works, so in those whom he condemns, unbelief and impiety begin the merit of punishment, so that through the punishment itself they may even do evil'—this I said most truly; but that the merit of faith is itself too a gift of God, I neither thought needed to be inquired into, nor said.

And in another place: 'On whom he has mercy,' I said, 'he makes do good; and whom he hardens (Rom 9:18), he leaves to do evil: but that mercy is granted to a preceding merit of faith, and that hardening to a preceding iniquity.' This is indeed true; but it still had to be asked whether the merit of faith too comes from the mercy of God—that is, whether this mercy comes about in a man only because he is faithful, or whether it was also brought about that he might be faithful. For we read, the Apostle saying: 'I have obtained mercy, that I might be faithful' (1 Cor 7:25): he does not say, because I was faithful.

To the faithful, then, it is indeed given; but it was also given that he might be faithful. And so most rightly I said in another place in the same book: 'Since it is not from works, but by the mercy of God, that we are both called to believe and granted to do good works when we believe, this mercy is not to be begrudged the gentiles'—although there I treated too little carefully of that call which is made through God's purpose (Augustine, Revisions 1.23.2-4).

4. 8. You certainly see what I then thought about faith and works, although I was laboring to commend the grace of God; and I now see that these brothers of ours are in this same opinion—because they did not take care to make progress along with me in my books as they did to read them. For if they had taken such care, they would have found this question solved according to the truth of the divine Scriptures in the first of the two books that I wrote to Simplician of blessed memory, bishop of the Church of Milan, the successor of holy Ambrose, at the very beginning of my episcopate. Unless perhaps they did not know those books—and if that is so, see to it that they come to know them.

About this first of those two books I spoke at the beginning of the second book of the Revisions; and that discussion of mine runs thus: Of the books, I said, that I produced as a bishop, the first two are to Simplician, prelate of the Church of Milan, who succeeded the most blessed Ambrose, on various questions, two of which, from the Letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans I brought together into the first book. The first of these is about what is written: 'What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means': down to the place where he says: 'Who will free me from this body of death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord' (Rom 7:7-25). In it I expounded those words of the Apostle, 'The law is spiritual, but I am carnal' (Rom 7:14), and the rest, by which the flesh is shown to fight against the spirit, in such a way as though a man were being described who was still under the law, not yet established under grace. For long afterward I came to know that those words could also belong to a spiritual man (and this is more probable).

The later question in this book is from the place where he says: 'And not only that, but also Rebecca, having conceived by one act of intercourse by Isaac our father,' down to the place where he says: 'Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom, and would have been made like Gomorrah' (Rom 9:10-29). In the solution of this question, effort was indeed made on behalf of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God won out; nor could it be reached except by understanding that the Apostle spoke with the clearest truth: 'For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?' (1 Cor 4:7). Wishing to show this too, the martyr Cyprian defined the whole matter by the very title, saying: 'We must boast in nothing, since nothing is ours' (Augustine, Revisions 2.2.1). See why I said above that by this apostolic testimony especially I myself too was convicted, when I thought otherwise about this matter—which God revealed to me in solving this question, when, as I said, I was writing to bishop Simplician. This testimony of the Apostle, then, where, to repress the inflation of man, he said: For what do you have that you have not received? does not allow any of the faithful to say: I have a faith that I did not receive. By these apostolic words all the haughtiness of this response is utterly repressed. But not even this can be said: Although I do not have perfect faith, yet I have its beginning, by which I first believed in Christ. For here too the answer comes: What do you have that you have not received? But if you have also received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

5. 9. But as for what they think—that of this faith it cannot for this reason be said, "For what do you have that you have not received?", because it has remained in the same nature, though vitiated, which was first given sound and perfect (Hilary, Letter 226, 4)—this is understood to avail nothing for what they want, if one considers why the Apostle said this.

For he was concerned that no one should boast in man, since dissensions had arisen among the Corinthian Christians, so that each one said: I indeed am Paul's; but another: I am Apollos'; and yet another: I am Cephas'; and from there it came to his saying: God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might confound the wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might confound the strong; and the low things of the world and the things that are despised God chose, and the things that are not, as though they were, that he might bring to nothing the things that are: that no flesh might boast before God (1 Cor 1:12, 27-29).

Here surely the Apostle's intention against human pride is clear enough: that no one should boast in man, and thus not even in himself. And so, when he had said, that no flesh might boast before God;

to show in what a man ought to boast, he at once added: But of him you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption: that, as it is written, Let him who boasts boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:30-31). From this his intention proceeds, so that afterward, rebuking them, he says: For you are still carnal: for since there are jealousy and strife among you, are you not carnal, and do you not walk according to man? For when one says, I indeed am Paul's, and another, I am Apollos'; are you not men? What then is Apollos? what is Paul? Ministers through whom you have believed: and to each as the Lord has given. I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth. And so neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters; but he who gives the growth, God (1 Cor 3:2-7). Do you see that the Apostle does nothing except that man be humbled and God alone be exalted? Seeing that in those who are planted and watered he says that not even the planter and the waterer is anything, but he who gives the growth, God: though even this very thing, that the one plants and the other waters, he attributes not to them but to the Lord, saying: To each as the Lord has given. I planted, Apollos watered.

Persisting, then, in this same intention, he comes to saying: And so let no one boast in man (1 Cor 3:21). For he had already said: Let him who boasts boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31; Cyprian, To Quirinus 3.4). After these things and certain others that are connected with them, this same intention of his is carried to the point of his saying: But these things, brothers, I have applied figuratively to myself and Apollos for your sake; that in us you may learn not to be puffed up, one for the one against the other, beyond what is written. For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you have not received? But if you have also received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (1 Cor 4:6-7).

5. 10. In this most evident intention of the Apostle, by which he speaks against human pride so that no one may boast in man but in the Lord, to suspect that he means the natural gifts of God—whether the whole and perfect nature itself, such as was given in the first creation, or whatever remnants of a vitiated nature—is, in my estimation, far too absurd. For are men distinguished from men by these gifts which are common to all men? But here he first said: For who distinguishes you? and then added: What do you have that you have not received? For a man puffed up against another could say: My faith distinguishes me, my righteousness, or whatever else.

Meeting such thoughts, the good Teacher says: What do you have that you have not received? From whom, if not from him who distinguishes you from another, to whom he did not give what he gave to you? But if you have also received it, he says, why do you boast as if you had not received it? Does he, I ask, do anything else except that he who boasts may boast in the Lord? But nothing is so contrary to this sense as for anyone so to boast of his own merits as though he had made them for himself, and not the grace of God: but the grace that distinguishes the good from the wicked, not the grace that is common to the good and the wicked.

Let it be, then, a grace attributed to nature by which we are rational living beings and are distinguished from beasts; let there be also a grace attributed to nature by which, among men themselves, the beautiful are distinguished from the deformed, or the clever from the slow, and whatever is of this kind; but it was not against a beast that the man whom the Apostle was restraining was puffing himself up, nor against another man over some natural gift that could be present even in the worst of men;

but he was puffed up because he attributed to himself and not to God some good that pertained to the good life, when he deserved to hear: For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you have not received?

For though it be of nature to be able to have faith, is it also of nature to have it? For faith is not of all (2 Thess 3:2): although to be able to have faith is of all. But the Apostle does not say: What can you have that you have not received the ability to have; rather he says: What do you have that you have not received? Accordingly, to be able to have faith, like being able to have love, is of the nature of men: but to have faith, like having love, is of the grace of the faithful.

That nature, then, in which the possibility of having faith was given to us, does not distinguish man from man: but faith itself distinguishes the faithful from the unbeliever. And thus, where it is said: For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you have not received?—whoever dares to say: I have faith of myself, therefore I did not receive it, surely contradicts this most open truth: not because to believe or not to believe is not in the choice of the human will, but because in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord (See Prov 8:35 (LXX)). Therefore to faith itself too, which is in the will, this pertains: For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you have not received?

6. 11. "Many hear the word of truth: but some believe, others contradict it. These, then, will to believe, but those are unwilling." Who would not know this? Who would deny it? But since for some the will is prepared by the Lord and for others it is not, one must surely distinguish what comes from his mercy and what from his judgment (See Ps 101:1 (100:1)). What Israel sought, says the Apostle, it did not obtain: but the election obtained it; the rest, however, were blinded, as it is written: God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, down to this present day. And David says: Let their table become a snare and a retribution and a stumbling block to them: let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bend their backs forever.

Behold mercy and judgment: mercy in the election that obtained the righteousness of God; judgment, however, in the rest who were blinded; and yet those, because they willed, believed; those others, because they were unwilling, did not believe. Mercy, therefore, and judgment were brought about in the wills themselves. For this election is of grace, certainly not of merits. For above he had said: So then, at this present time also, a remnant has been saved through the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace (Rom 11:5-10).

Freely, then, the election obtained what it obtained: nothing of theirs went before that they should give it first and it be repaid to them: for nothing he made them saved. But upon the rest, who were blinded, as is not passed over in silence there, it was done by way of retribution. All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps 25:10 (24:10)). But his ways are inscrutable (Rom 11:33). Inscrutable, therefore, are both the mercy by which he freely sets free, and the truth by which he justly judges.

7. 12. But perhaps they may say: "The Apostle distinguishes faith from works; he says that grace is not from works, but he does not say that it is not from faith." So it is indeed: but Jesus says that faith itself too is a work of God, and he commands us to do it. For the Jews said to him: What shall we do, that we may work the work of God? Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent (John 6:28-29). Thus, then, the Apostle distinguishes faith from works in the way that, in the two kingdoms of the Hebrews, Judah is distinguished from Israel, though Judah itself is Israel. But he says that a man is justified by faith, not by works (Gal 2:16), because faith itself is given first, and from it the rest are obtained, which are properly called works, in which one lives justly. For he himself also says: By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God: that is, even what I said, through faith, is not from yourselves, but the gift of God—faith too. Not from works, he says, lest anyone be exalted (Eph 2:8-9).

For it is commonly said: He deserved to believe because he was a good man even before he believed. This can be said of Cornelius, whose alms were accepted and whose prayers were heard before he had believed in Christ (Acts 10:4): and yet he did not give alms and pray without some faith. For how was he calling upon one in whom he had not believed (Rom 10:14)? But if he could have been saved without the faith of Christ, the architect, the apostle Peter, would not have been sent to build him up: although unless the Lord builds the house, they who build it have labored in vain (Ps 127:1 (126:1)). And it is said to us: "Faith is from us, the rest is from the Lord, namely what pertains to the works of righteousness": as if faith did not pertain to the building, as if, I say, the foundation did not pertain to the building. But if it pertains first and most of all, then the one who builds labors in vain in preaching faith, unless the Lord, by showing mercy, builds it within. Whatever good Cornelius did, then—both before he believed in Christ, and when he believed, and after he had believed—the whole must be ascribed to God, lest anyone be exalted.

8. 13. Accordingly, that one Teacher and Lord himself, when he had said what I recalled above, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent (John 6:29), a little later in that same discourse of his says: I told you that you have both seen me and have not believed. All that the Father gives me will come to me (John 6:36-37). What is will come to me, except: will believe in me? But that it may happen, the Father gives. Likewise a little later he says: Do not murmur among yourselves: no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him: and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets: And they shall all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes to me (John 6:43-46).

What is Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes to me, except: There is no one who hears from the Father and learns, and does not come to me? For if everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes, then surely everyone who does not come has not heard from the Father, nor learned: for if he had heard and learned, he would come. For no one has heard and learned, and not come: but everyone, as the Truth says, who has heard from the Father and has learned comes.

Far removed from the senses of the flesh is this school, in which the Father is heard and teaches, that one may come to the Son. There too is the Son himself, because he is the Father's Word, through whom he so teaches; nor does he do this with the ear of the flesh, but of the heart. There at the same time is also the Spirit of the Father and the Son; for neither does he not teach, nor does he teach separately: for we have learned that the works of the Trinity are inseparable. And he too is, of course, the Holy Spirit, of whom the Apostle says: Having, however, the same Spirit of faith (2 Cor 4:13). But this is attributed especially to the Father because of him the Only-begotten is begotten, and from him the Holy Spirit proceeds: on which it would take long to discourse more thoroughly; and I think that our labor On the Trinity, which is God, has already reached you in fifteen books.

Far removed, I say, from the senses of the flesh is this school, in which God is heard and teaches. We see many come to the Son, because we see many believe in Christ: but where and how they have heard this from the Father and learned it, we do not see. This grace is exceedingly hidden: but who would doubt that it is grace? This grace, then, which is bestowed on human hearts in secret by the divine bounty, is rejected by no hard heart. For it is bestowed precisely that the hardness of the heart may first be taken away. When, therefore, the Father is heard within and teaches, that one may come to the Son, he takes away the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, as he promised through the preaching of the prophet (See Ezek 11:19). For thus he makes the sons of the promise, and the vessels of mercy which he has prepared for glory (See Rom 9:23).

8. 14. Why, then, does he not teach all to come to Christ, except that all whom he teaches, he teaches in mercy, but those whom he does not teach, he does not teach in judgment? For he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens (Rom 9:18): but he has mercy by bestowing good things; he hardens by repaying what is deserved.

Or if these too, as some have preferred to distinguish, are the words of the one to whom the Apostle says, You will say to me, then—so that he himself is taken to have said, Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens, and what follows, that is, Why does he still complain? for who resists his will? (Rom 9:19)—did the Apostle answer: O man, what you said is false?

No: but he answered: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or has the potter no power over the clay, to make of the same lump (Rom 9:20-21), and what follows, which you know very well.

And yet, in a certain manner, the Father teaches all to come to his Son. For it is not in vain written in the Prophets: And they shall all be taught by God (Isa 54:13). When he had put this testimony first, he then added: Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes to me (John 6:45). Just as, then, we speak rightly when, of some teacher of letters who alone is in a city, we say: This man teaches everyone here letters—not because all learn, but because no one who learns letters there learns except from him—so we rightly say: God teaches all to come to Christ, not because all come, but because no one comes otherwise. But why he does not teach all, the Apostle disclosed, as far as he judged should be disclosed: because willing to show his wrath and to make known his power, he endured with much patience the vessels of wrath that are fitted for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared for glory (Rom 9:18-23).

Hence it is that the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing; but to those who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18). All these God teaches to come to Christ; for he wills all these to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). For if he had also willed to teach those to whom the word of the cross is foolishness, so that they might come to Christ, without doubt they too would come. For he neither deceives nor is deceived who says: Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes to me. Far be it, then, that anyone should not come who has heard from the Father and has learned.

8. 15. "Why," they say, "does he not teach all?" If we say that those whom he does not teach are unwilling to learn, it will be answered us: And where is that which is said to him, O God, you will turn and bring us to life (Ps 85:6 (84:7))? Or if God does not make the willing out of the unwilling, why does the Church pray, according to the command of the Lord, for her persecutors (See Matt 5:44)? For so too did holy Cyprian wish what we say to be understood (Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer 18): Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth (Matt 6:10): that is, as in those who have already believed, and are as it were heaven, so also in those who do not believe, and on this account are still earth.

What, then, do we pray for those unwilling to believe, except that God may work in them even the willing (See Phil 2:13)? Of the Jews the Apostle certainly says: Brothers, the good will of my heart, and my prayer to God for them, is for their salvation (Rom 10:1). He prays for those who do not believe—for what, except that they may believe? For not otherwise do they obtain salvation. If, then, the faith of those who pray anticipates the grace of God, does the faith of those for whom it is prayed that they may believe anticipate the grace of God? Since this is prayed for them: that to those not believing, that is, not having faith, faith itself may be granted.

When, therefore, the gospel is preached, some believe, some do not believe; but those who believe, while the preacher sounds without, hear and learn within from the Father; those, however, who do not believe, hear without, but within they do not hear nor learn: that is, to those it is given to believe, to those it is not given. For no one, he says, comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44). And this is said more openly afterward. For after a while, when he was speaking of his flesh to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, and some even of his disciples said: This is a hard saying; who can hear it? Jesus, knowing within himself that his disciples were murmuring about this, said to them: Does this scandalize you? And a little later he says: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life; but there are some of you who do not believe. And presently the Evangelist says: For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed, and who would betray him, and he said: For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father (John 6:60-66).

Therefore to be drawn by the Father to Christ, and to hear and learn from the Father in order to come to Christ, is nothing other than to receive from the Father the gift by which one believes in Christ. For it was not those who hear the gospel from those who do not hear it, but believers from unbelievers, that he was distinguishing who said: No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father.

8. 16. Faith, therefore, both begun and perfected, is a gift of God: and that this gift is given to some and not given to others, let no one doubt at all who does not wish to fight against the most manifest sacred Scriptures. But why it is not given to all should not disturb the believer, who believes that from one man all have gone into a condemnation undoubtedly most just, so that there would be no just reproach of God even if no one were set free from it. Hence it is clear that the grace is great, in that very many are set free, and they recognize, in those who are not set free, what was owed to themselves: so that he who boasts may boast not in his own merits, which he sees to be equal to those of the damned, but in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31).

But why he sets free this one rather than that one, his judgments are unsearchable and his ways inscrutable (Rom 11:33). For it is better that here too we hear or say: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20), than that we dare to say, as if we knew, what he willed to be hidden—he who nonetheless could not will anything unjust.

9. 17. But as for what you recall my having said in a certain little work of mine against Porphyry under the title On the Time of the Christian Religion, I said it in such a way as to pass over this more careful and more laborious discussion of grace—not, indeed, omitting to signify that I did not wish to explain in that place what could be explained elsewhere or by others.

For thus I spoke, among other things, answering the question posed—why Christ came after such long ages: Accordingly, I said, since they do not object against Christ that not all follow his teaching (for they themselves perceive that this can in no way be rightly objected against the wisdom of the philosophers, or even against the divinity of their own gods), what will they answer if—setting aside that depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, where perhaps another divine plan far more secret lies hidden, and without prejudice also to other possible causes that can be traced out by the prudent—we say to them, for the sake of brevity, this alone in the discussion of this question: that Christ willed then to appear to men, and to have his teaching preached among them, when he knew, and where he knew, there were those who were going to believe in him?

Thus the salvation of this religion, through which alone, as the only true one, true salvation is truly promised, has never been lacking to anyone who was worthy; and the one to whom it was lacking was not worthy. And from the beginning of human propagation to the end, it is preached to some for a reward, to some for judgment. And accordingly, both those to whom it was not announced at all were foreknown as those who would not believe; and those to whom, though they would not believe, it was nonetheless announced, are set forth as an example to the former; but those to whom, as those who would believe, it is announced, these are prepared for the kingdom of heaven and the fellowship of the holy angels (Augustine, Letter 102, 14-15).

9. 18. Do you see that, without prejudice to the hidden plan of God and to other causes, I wished to say this about the foreknowledge of Christ—what seemed sufficient to refute the unbelief of the pagans, who had raised this question? For what is truer than that Christ foreknew who, and when, and in what places, were going to believe in him? But whether, once Christ had been preached to them, they were going to have faith of themselves, or were going to receive it by God's gift—that is, whether God merely foreknew them, or also predestined them—I did not then think it necessary to inquire and discuss.

Accordingly, what I said: that Christ willed then to appear to men, and to have his teaching preached among them, when he knew, and where he knew, there were those who were going to believe in him, can also be said thus: that Christ willed then to appear to men, and to have his teaching preached among them, when he knew, and where he knew, there were those who had been chosen in him before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4).

But because, if it were so stated, it would make the reader attentive to inquiring into those things which now, owing to the warning of the Pelagian error, must be discussed more copiously and more laboriously, it seemed to me that what was then enough should be stated briefly, setting aside, as I said, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and without prejudice to other causes, which I thought should be discussed not then, but more opportunely elsewhere.

10. 19. Likewise, what I said—that the salvation of this religion has never been lacking to anyone who was worthy, and that the one to whom it was lacking was not worthy (Augustine, Letter 102, 15)—if it be examined and it be asked from what each is worthy, there are those who say: by the human will; but we say: by grace, or by divine predestination. Now between grace and predestination there is only this difference: that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is now the giving itself. And so what the Apostle says—Not from works, lest anyone be exalted: for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works—is grace; but what follows—which God prepared, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:9-10)—is predestination, which cannot exist without foreknowledge; foreknowledge, however, can exist without predestination.

For by predestination God foreknew those things which he himself was going to do: hence it is said, He has made the things that are to come (Isa 45:11 (LXX)). But he is able to foreknow also the things that he himself does not do; such as any sins whatever: for although there are certain things which are so sins that they are also punishments of sins—whence it is said, God handed them over to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting (Rom 1:28)—there is in that no sin of God, but judgment. Therefore the predestination of God which is unto the good is, as I said, the preparation for grace; but grace is the effect of that predestination itself.

When, therefore, God promised to Abraham the faith of the gentiles in his seed, saying, I have made you the father of many nations (Gen 17:4-5)—whence the Apostle says, Therefore it is of faith, that the promise may be firm according to grace to all the seed (Rom 4:16)—he promised it not from the power of our will, but from his own predestination. For he promised what he himself was going to do, not what men were going to do.

For although men do the good things that pertain to the worship of God, he makes them do what he has commanded; they do not make him do what he has promised: otherwise, the fulfilling of God's promises would be in the power not of God but of men, and what was promised by the Lord would be rendered to Abraham by them. But Abraham did not believe thus; rather, he believed, giving glory to God, that what he promised, he is also able to do (Rom 4:20-21); he does not say: to foretell; he does not say: to foreknow; for he can foretell and foreknow also the deeds of others; but he says: he is also able to do; and accordingly deeds not of others, but his own.

10. 20. Or perhaps God promised to Abraham the good works of the gentiles in his seed, so that he promised this which he himself does, but did not promise the faith of the gentiles, which men make for themselves; rather, in order to promise what he himself does, he foreknew that men were going to make that faith? The Apostle, indeed, does not speak so; for God promised to Abraham sons who would follow the footsteps of his faith: which he says most openly.

But if he promised the works of the gentiles, not the faith—then surely, since there are no good works except from faith (for the righteous lives by faith (Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17); and, Whatever is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:23); and, Without faith it is impossible to please him (Heb 11:6))—it is nonetheless in the power of men that God should fulfill what he promised. For unless a man does what, apart from God's gift, belongs to man, he himself will not do what he gives: that is, unless a man has faith of himself, God does not fulfill what he promised, namely that the works of righteousness should be given by God.

And accordingly, that God may be able to fulfill his promises is in the power not of God but of man. But if truth and devotion forbid us to believe this, let us believe with Abraham that what he promised, he is also able to do. Now he promised sons to Abraham; and they cannot exist if they do not have faith: therefore he gives faith too.

11. 21. Indeed, since the Apostle says, Therefore it is of faith, that the promise may be firm according to grace (Rom 4:16), I marvel that men prefer to entrust themselves to their own infirmity rather than to the firmness of God's promise. "But the will of God concerning me," one says, "is uncertain to me." What then? Is your own will concerning yourself certain to you, and do you not fear: Let him who seems to stand take heed lest he fall (1 Cor 10:12)? Since, then, both are uncertain, why does a man not entrust his faith, his hope, and his love to the firmer rather than to the more infirm?

11. 22. "But when it is said," they say, "If you believe, you will be saved (Rom 10:9), one of these is required, the other offered. What is required is in the power of man; what is offered is in the power of God" (Hilary, Letter 226, 2). Why is not both in the power of God, both what he commands and what he offers? For he is asked to give what he commands; believers ask that their faith may be increased; they pray for those who do not believe, that faith may be granted to them: and so, both in its increase and in its beginnings, faith is the gift of God. But If you believe, you will be saved is said in the way that If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live (Rom 8:13) is said.

For here too one of these two is required, the other offered. If by the Spirit, he says, you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live: so that to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit is required; but that we may live is offered.

Shall we, then, be pleased to say that putting to death the deeds of the flesh is not a gift of God, nor to confess that this is a gift of God, because we hear it required of us, with the reward of life offered, if we do this? Far be it that this should please the partakers and defenders of grace. This is the damnable error of the Pelagians: whose mouths the Apostle at once stopped, adding: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14); lest we should believe that we put to death the deeds of the flesh not by the Spirit of God, but by our own spirit. Of which Spirit of God he was speaking also there, where he says: But all these one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills (1 Cor 12:11). Among all of which, as you know, he named faith too.

Just as, then, although it is a gift of God to put to death the deeds of the flesh, it is nonetheless required of us with the reward of life set before us: so faith too is a gift of God, although it too, when it is said If you believe, you will be saved, is required of us with the reward of salvation set before us. For these things are both commanded us and shown to be gifts of God, that it may be understood that we both do them and God makes us do them, as he says most openly through the prophet Ezekiel.

For what is more open than where he says: I will make you do them (Ezek 36:27)? Attend to the very passage of Scripture, and you will see that God promises that he will make them do what he commands to be done. He does not, indeed, there pass over their merits, but their evil ones (See Ezek 36:31); by which he shows that he repays good things for evil ones, by this very fact, that he makes them have good works thereafter, since he himself makes them do the divine commands.

12. 23. But all this reasoning, by which we defend that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord is truly grace—that is, that it is not given according to our merits—although it is most evidently asserted by the testimonies of the divine words, nonetheless labors somewhat, among those who think that unless they assign to themselves something which they give first that it may be repaid to them, they are kept back from all zeal for devotion, in the case of the older who already use the choice of the will: but when one comes to little children, and to the very Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5), every assertion of human merits preceding the grace of God fails: for neither are those distinguished from the rest by any preceding good merits, that they should belong to the liberator of men; nor was he, by any preceding human merits—since he himself too is a man—made the liberator of men.

12. 24. For who would listen to the claim that little children are said to depart from this life baptized in that very infant age on account of their future merits; and that others, accordingly, die unbaptized at the same age because their future merits too were foreknown, but evil ones—God not rewarding or damning their good or evil life, but no life at all (Prosper, Letter 225, 5)? The Apostle indeed fixed a boundary which the incautious suspicion of man, to speak more gently, ought not to transgress. For he says: We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive according to the things he has done through the body, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10): has done, he says; he did not add: Or was going to do. But whence it has come into the minds of such men, I do not know, that future things which are not future should be punished, or that the merits of little children should be honored.

But why was it said that a man is to be judged according to the things he has done through the body, since many things are done by the mind alone, not through the body, nor through any member of the body—and very often things so great that a most just punishment is owed to such thoughts: as it is, to pass over other things, that the fool said in his heart: There is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1))? What is, then, according to the things he has done through the body, except: According to the things he has done at the time when he was in the body, so that by through the body we understand: Through the time of the body? For after the body no one will be in the body, except at the final resurrection; not for the gaining of any merits, but for receiving rewards for good merits, and for paying punishments for evil ones. But in this intervening time between the laying down and the receiving back of the body, souls are either tormented or are at rest, according to the things they have done during the time of the body. To this time of the body belongs also that which the Pelagians deny but the Church of Christ confesses: original sin; by which, whether loosed through the grace of God, or, through the judgment of God, not loosed, when infants die, either by the merit of regeneration they pass from evil things to good, or by the merit of their origin they pass from evil things to evil. This the Catholic faith knows; in this even some heretics consent without any contradiction. But that anyone is judged not according to the merits he had while he was in the body, but according to the merits he was going to have if he had lived longer in the body—whence men could form such an opinion, men whose talents your letters indicate to be not contemptible, I, marveling and astonished, cannot find out; nor would I dare to believe it, were it not that I dare not disbelieve you.

But I hope that God will be present, so that, being admonished, they may quickly see that those things which are said to have been going to be sins, if through the judgment of God they can rightly be punished in the unbaptized, can also through the grace of God be forgiven in the baptized. For whoever says that future sins can only be punished by God judging, but cannot be forgiven by God showing mercy, ought to consider how great an injury he does to God and to his grace; as if a future sin could be foreknown and could not be forgiven.

But if this is absurd, then he ought rather to have come to the aid of those who, if they had lived long, were going to be sinners, when they die at a young age, with the washing by which sins are washed away.

...or are deprived of baptism because they were foreknown as those who would not do penance, if they lived.

13. 25. But if perhaps they say that sins are forgiven to the penitent; and that these little children dying at a young age are therefore not baptized, because they were foreknown as those who would not do penance if they lived, but that those who are baptized and depart from their bodies as little children, God foreknew would have done penance

if they lived: let them attend and see that, if this is so, then it is no longer original sins that are punished in little children dying without baptism, but each one's own future sins if he had lived: and likewise that in the baptized it is not original sins that are washed away, but their own future ones if they had lived; since they could not sin except at a greater age: but that some were foreseen as those who would do penance, others as those who would not: and that for this reason some departed this life baptized, others without baptism.

If the Pelagians dared this, they would no longer labor, by denying original sin, to seek for little children, outside the kingdom of God, some place of I know not what felicity of their own: especially when they are convicted that these cannot have eternal life, because they have not eaten the flesh nor drunk the blood of Christ (See John 6:54); and because, in those who have no sin at all, the baptism that is given for the remission of sins is false.

For they would say outright that there is no original sin, but that, according to their future merits if they had lived, those infants who are loosed from the body are either baptized or not baptized; and that, according to their future merits, they either receive or do not receive the body and blood of Christ, without which they cannot have life at all: and that they are baptized unto a true remission of sins, although they drew none from Adam; since the sins are remitted them of which God foreknew that they would do penance. Thus they would most easily plead and win their case, by which they deny that there is original sin, and contend that the grace of God is not given except according to our merits. But because the future things of men which are not going to be are, beyond doubt, no merits, and this is most easy to see, therefore not even the Pelagians could say this, and still more these others ought not to have said it. For it cannot be said how grievously I take it that what the Pelagians saw to be most false and most absurd, these others did not see—those who, with us, condemn the error of those heretics by Catholic authority.

14. 26. Cyprian wrote a book On Mortality, laudably known to many and almost all who love ecclesiastical writings: in which he says that death is found to be not only not useless to the faithful, but even useful, since it withdraws a man from the dangers of sinning and establishes him in the security of not sinning. But what does it profit, if even future sins, which have not been committed, are punished? Yet he treats most copiously and most excellently of how the dangers of sinning are neither lacking in this life nor remain after it. There too he puts that testimony from the book of Wisdom: He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding (Wis 4:11).

You said that, when I too cited this, these brothers rejected it as though it were not adduced from a canonical book: as if, even apart from the attestation of this book, the matter itself were not clear, which we wished to be taught from it. For what Christian would dare to deny that the righteous man, if he is overtaken by death, will be in refreshment (See Wis 4:7)? Whoever should say this, what man of sound faith will think it must be resisted? Likewise, if one should say that the righteous man, if he departs from his righteousness in which he long lived, and is overtaken by death in that impiety in which he has lived—I do not say one year, but one day—will go hence to the punishments owed to the wicked, his past righteousness profiting him nothing (Ezek 18:24): what one of the faithful will contradict this clear truth? Moreover, if it be asked of us whether, had he then died when he was righteous, he would have found punishments or rest, shall we hesitate to answer rest?

This is the whole reason why it was said, by whomever it was said: He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding. For it was said according to the dangers of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew this which was going to be, not that which was not going to be: that is, that he was going to grant him an untimely death, that he might be withdrawn from the uncertainty of temptations, not that he was going to sin, who was not going to remain in temptation. For of this life it is read in the book of Job: Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation? (Job 7:1 (LXX)).

But why it is granted to some that, while they are righteous, they should be taken from the dangers of this life; while other righteous men are held, by a more prolonged life, in those same dangers until they fall from righteousness—who has known the mind of the Lord? (Rom 11:34). And yet from this it is given to understand that even those righteous men who keep good and devout ways down to the maturity of old age and the last day of this life must boast not in their own merits but in the Lord: since he who took away the righteous man by the brevity of life, lest wickedness should change his understanding, himself, in whatever length of life, keeps the righteous man so that wickedness may not change his understanding. But why he has held here a righteous man who was going to fall, whom he could have taken away from here before he fell—his judgments are altogether most just, but inscrutable.

14. 27. Since this is so, the opinion of the book of Wisdom ought not to have been repudiated—a book that has deserved to be read aloud in the Church of Christ from the rank of the readers of the Church of Christ for so long a span of years, and to be heard by all Christians, from bishops down to the lowest faithful laity, penitents, and catechumens, with the veneration due to divine authority. For surely, if I were to bring forward, from the commentators on the divine Scriptures who came before us, a defense of this opinion which we are now urged to defend more carefully and copiously than usual against the new error of the Pelagians—that is, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, and is given freely to whom it is given, because it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, but by a just judgment is not given to whom it is not given, because there is no injustice with God (Rom 9:14, 16)—if, then, I were to bring out a defense of this opinion from the Catholic commentators on the divine words who preceded us, surely these brothers, for whom we are now pleading, would acquiesce: for this you signified in your letters.

What need is there, then, that we should scrutinize the little works of those who, before this heresy arose, did not have the necessity of being engaged in this question difficult to solve? Which they would without doubt do, if they were compelled to answer such men. Hence it came about that they touched briefly and in passing, in certain places of their writings, on what they thought about the grace of God, but lingered over those things which they were arguing against the enemies of the Church, and in exhortations to the various virtues, by which one serves the living and true God for the attaining of eternal life and true happiness. But in the frequenting of prayers it appeared plainly what the grace of God avails: for those things which he commands to be done would not be asked of God, unless it were granted by him that they should be done.

14. 28. But those who wish to be instructed by the opinions of the commentators ought to set this book of Wisdom, where it is read, He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding (Wis 4:11), before all the commentators: since the distinguished commentators of the times nearest the apostles set it before themselves, who, adducing it as a witness, believed that they were adducing nothing but a divine testimony. And it is certainly established that the most blessed Cyprian argued, in order to commend the benefit of an earlier death, that those who end this life in which one can sin are snatched from the dangers of sins. In the same book he says, among other things: Why, since you are going to be with Christ and are secure of the Lord's promise, do you not embrace the fact that you are called to Christ, and rejoice that you are rid of the devil? (Cyprian, On Mortality 3). And in another place he says: Children escape the danger of slippery age (Cyprian, On Mortality 15). And likewise in another: Why, he says, do we not hasten and run, that we may be able to see our homeland, to greet our parents? A great number of those dear to us awaits us there—parents, brothers, children; a numerous and abundant throng longs for us, already secure of their own safety, still anxious for our salvation (Cyprian, On Mortality 26).

By these and similar opinions, in the clearest light of the Catholic faith, that teacher testifies plainly enough that, down to the laying down of this body, the dangers of sinning and temptations are to be feared; thereafter no one will suffer any such things. And even if he did not testify this, when would any Christian whatever doubt about this matter? How, therefore, would it not profit a fallen man, ending this life miserably in that same fall and going to the punishments owed to such—how, I say, would it not profit him most greatly and supremely, if from this place of temptations, before he fell, he were taken away by death?

14. 29. And accordingly, if too inconsiderate a contention be absent, this whole question is finished concerning him who was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding (Wis 4:11). Nor should the book of Wisdom, which has deserved to be read in the Church of Christ for so great a number of years, in which this too is read, suffer injury because it resists those who are deceived on behalf of the merits of men, so as to come against the most manifest grace of God:

which appears most of all in little children, of whom, when some take the end of this life baptized and others unbaptized, they sufficiently indicate mercy and judgment: mercy indeed gratuitous, judgment owed.

For if men were judged according to the merits of their life, which they did not have, being prevented by death, but would have had if they had lived, it would profit nothing him who was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding; it would profit nothing those who die fallen, if they had died earlier: which no Christian will dare to say.

Therefore our brothers, who with us fight against the ruin of the Pelagian error on behalf of the Catholic faith, ought not to favor this Pelagian opinion so far—the opinion by which they think that the grace of God is given according to our merits—that, what those others cannot dare, they should strive to destroy the opinion plainly true and anciently Christian, He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding; and to build up that which we would think no one would, I do not say believe, but even dream—namely, that each of the dead is judged according to the things he was going to do, if he had lived for a more extended time. For so clear is it that what we say is unconquerable—that the grace of God is not given according to our merits—that ingenious men, contradicting this truth, were compelled to say these things, which are to be driven from the ears and thoughts of all.

15. 30. There is also a most resplendent light of predestination and grace, the Savior himself, the very Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5): who, that he might be this, by what preceding merits of his own, whether of works or of faith, did the human nature that is in him acquire it? Let it be answered, I beg: that man, that he might be, when assumed by the Word coeternal with the Father into the unity of person, the only-begotten Son of God—whence did he merit this? What good of his, of whatever kind, went before?

What did he do before, what did he believe, what did he ask, that he might attain to this ineffable excellence? Was it not by the action and the assuming of the Word that the man himself, from the moment he began to be, began to be the only Son of God? Did not that woman full of grace conceive the only Son of God? Was not the only Son of God born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, not by carnal desire, but by the singular gift of God?

Was it to be feared, that as age came on, that man would sin by free choice? Or was the will in him for that reason not free—and was it not all the more free, the more it could not be a slave to sin? Indeed, all these things singularly to be admired, and others, if any can be most truly said to be proper to him, the human—that is, our—nature received singularly in him, by no preceding merits of its own. Let this man answer God here, if he dares, and say: Why not I also? And if he hears, O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20), let him not even so restrain himself, but increase his impudence, and say: How do I hear, Who are you, O man? Since I am what I hear, that is, a man, which he too is of whom I am speaking, why am I not what he too is? But he, of course, is such and so great by grace. Why is the grace diverse, where the nature is common? Surely there is no respect of persons with God (Rom 2:11). Who, I do not say Christian, but sane, would say these things?

15. 31. Let there appear to us, then, in our Head, the very fount of grace, whence, according to the measure of each one, it diffuses itself through all his members. By that grace any man becomes a Christian, from the beginning of his faith, by which grace that man, from his beginning, was made Christ; here too reborn of the same Spirit of whom he was born; by the same Spirit there comes about in us the remission of sins, by which Spirit it came about that he had no sin. This God surely foreknew that he was going to do. This, then, is the predestination of the saints, which shone forth most of all in the Holy of holies: which of those who rightly understand the words of truth can deny?

For we have learned that the Lord of glory himself, insofar as he was made, as a man, the Son of God, was predestined. The Teacher of the gentiles cries out at the head of his Letters: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he had promised before through his Prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:1-4).

Jesus, then, was predestined, so that he who was going to be according to the flesh the son of David should nonetheless be in power the Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification; because he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. This is that singular assuming of man by God the Word, ineffably brought about, so that he was truly and properly called Son of God and son of man at once—son of man on account of the man assumed, and Son of God on account of the only-begotten God who assumed—lest not a Trinity but a quaternity be believed. Predestined was this so great and so exalted and supreme lifting up of human nature, that it had nothing to which it could be raised higher: just as, for us, the divinity itself had nothing to which it could lower itself more humbly than the nature of man it assumed, with the weakness of the flesh, even to the death of the cross. As, therefore, that one was predestined to be our Head, so we many are predestined to be his members.

Here let human merits, which perished through Adam, be silent; and let the grace of God reign which reigns through Jesus Christ our Lord, the only Son of God, the one Lord. Whoever finds, in our Head, preceding merits of that singular generation, let him seek, in us his members, preceding merits of our multiplied regeneration. For that generation was not repaid to Christ but bestowed, that, free from every obligation of sin, he should be born of the Spirit and the Virgin. So too to us, that we should be reborn of water and the Spirit, it was not repaid for any merit, but bestowed freely; and if faith led us to the washing of regeneration, we ought not for that reason to think that we first gave something, that the saving regeneration should be repaid to us; for he made us believe in Christ, who made for us the Christ in whom we believe; he makes in men the beginning of faith and its perfection in Jesus, who made the man the prince of faith and its perfecter, Jesus (Heb 12:2): for so he is called, as you know, in the Letter to the Hebrews.

16. 32. For God calls many predestined ones his sons, that he may make them members of his only predestined Son—not by that calling by which were called also those who refused to come to the wedding (See Luke 14:16-20): for by that calling both the Jews were called, to whom Christ crucified is a scandal, and the gentiles, to whom the crucified is foolishness; but by that calling he calls the predestined, which the Apostle distinguished when he says that, to the very Jews and Greeks who are called, he preaches Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For he says thus: But to those who are called (1 Cor 1:23-24), to show that those others were not called: knowing that there is a certain sure calling of those who are called according to the purpose, whom he beforehand foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:28-29).

Signifying this calling, he says: Not from works, but from him who calls, it was said to her: The elder shall serve the younger (Rom 9:12-13). Did he say: Not from works, but from him who believes? Indeed he took even this away from man, that he might give the whole to God. He said, then: but from him who calls: not by any calling whatever, but by that calling by which one becomes a believer.

16. 33. This too he was looking to when he said: The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. For here too attend a little to what was being discussed. For when he had said, For I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own eyes: that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the gentiles should enter, and so all Israel should be saved; as it is written: There shall come out of Zion he who delivers, and shall turn away impiety from Jacob; and this is my covenant with them, when I shall take away their sins, he at once added what must be carefully understood: According to the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake; but according to the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom 11:25-29).

What is, According to the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake, except that their enmity, by which they killed Christ, profited the gospel, as we see, without doubt? And he shows that this came from the arrangement of God, who knows how to use even evils well: not that the vessels of wrath may profit him, but that, by his using them well, they may profit the vessels of mercy. For what could be said more openly than that which was said: According to the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake?

It is, then, in the power of the wicked to sin: but that by sinning they should do this or that by that wickedness is not in their power, but in the power of God, who divides the darkness and orders it: so that from this too what they do against the will of God is not fulfilled except the will of God.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that when the apostles, dismissed by the Jews, had come to their own people and had reported how much the priests and elders had said to them, they all with one accord lifted up their voice to the Lord and said: Lord, you are the one who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your holy servant, said: Why have the gentiles raged, and the peoples meditated vain things? The kings of the earth stood by, and the princes came together as one, against the Lord and against his Christ. For there have come together in truth, in this city, against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed, Herod and Pilate and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your counsel predestined to be done (Acts 4:24-28).

Behold what was said: According to the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake. For the hand and counsel of God predestined that as much should be done by the enemy Jews as was necessary for the gospel for our sake. But what is it that follows: but according to the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers? Are those enemies, who perished in their enmities, and who, opposing Christ, still perish from that very nation—are they themselves the elect and the beloved? Far be it: who, even the most foolish, would say this? But both, though contrary to each other—that is, enemies and beloved—come together, although not in the same men, yet in the same nation of the Jews, and refer to the same carnal seed of Israel, some of them pertaining to the lameness, others to the blessing of Israel himself (See Gen 32:25-32).

For he explained this sense more openly above, where he says: What Israel sought, it did not obtain: but the election obtained it, and the rest were blinded (Rom 11:7). Yet in both it is the same Israel. Where, then, we hear: Israel did not obtain, or, the rest were blinded; there are to be understood the enemies for our sake; but where we hear: but the election obtained it, there are to be understood the beloved for the sake of the fathers: to which fathers, of course, these things were promised. For to Abraham the promises were made, and to his seed (Gal 3:16).

Whence also into this olive tree the wild olive of the gentiles is grafted (Rom 11:17). Now, moreover, what election he means must surely occur to us, since it is according to grace, not according to debt; for a remnant has been made through the election of grace (Rom 11:5). This election obtained it, the rest being blinded. According to this election the Israelites are beloved for the sake of the fathers.

For they were not called by that calling of which it was said: Many are called (Matt 20:16), but by that by which the elect are called. Whence here too, after he had said, but according to the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, he immediately added that which we are discussing: For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance: that is, they are fixed stably, without change.

Those who pertain to this calling are all taught by God, nor can any of them say: I believed in order to be called thus; for the mercy of God anticipated him, because he was so called that he should believe. For all who are taught by God come to the Son: since they have heard and learned from the Father through the Son, who says most evidently: Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned comes to me (John 6:45). But of these none perishes, because all that the Father has given him, he will lose nothing of it (John 6:39). Whoever, then, is from there, perishes not at all; nor was he from there who perishes. On account of which it was said: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us (1 John 2:19).

17. 34. Let us understand, then, the calling by which the elect are made: not those who are chosen because they have believed, but those who are chosen that they may believe. For this the Lord himself sufficiently discloses, where he says: You did not choose me, but I chose you (John 15:16). For if they had been chosen on this account, that they had believed, then they themselves had surely first chosen him by believing in him, so as to deserve to be chosen. But this he takes away entirely, who says: You did not choose me, but I chose you. And they indeed, without doubt, chose him, when they believed in him. Whence he says, for no other reason, You did not choose me, but I chose you; except that they did not choose him that he might choose them, but he chose them that they might choose him: because his mercy anticipated them (See Ps 59:11 (58:11)) according to grace, not according to debt.

He chose them, then, out of the world, when he was acting here in the flesh, but already chosen in himself before the foundation of the world. This is the immovable truth of predestination and grace. For what is it that the Apostle says: As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4)? If this was surely said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because he himself was going to make them believers, the Son speaks against this foreknowledge, saying: You did not choose me, but I chose you: since God would rather have foreknown this, that they themselves were going to choose him, so as to deserve to be chosen by him.

They were chosen, therefore, before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future deeds: but they were chosen out of the world by that calling by which God fulfilled what he had predestined. For those whom he predestined, them he also called: that is, by that calling according to the purpose: not others, then, but those whom he predestined, them he also called: nor others, but those whom he so called, them he also justified: nor others, but those whom he predestined, called, justified, them he also glorified (Rom 8:30), by that end, of course, which has no end.

God chose the faithful, then, but that they should be such, not because they already were. The apostle James says: Has not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to those who love him? (Jas 2:5). By choosing, then, he makes them rich in faith, as he makes them heirs of the kingdom. For he is rightly said to choose this in them, which he chooses them in order to bring about in them. I ask, who would hear the Lord saying, You did not choose me, but I chose you, and dare to say that men believe in order to be chosen, when rather they are chosen in order to believe—lest, against the opinion of the truth, they be found to have first chosen Christ, to whom Christ says: You did not choose me, but I chose you?

18. 35. Who would hear the Apostle saying: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ: as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate in his sight in love, predestining us unto the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, in which he has made us pleasing in his beloved Son; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins according to the riches of his grace, which abounded in us in all wisdom and prudence, that he might show us the mystery of his will, according to his good will, which he purposed in him, in the dispensation of the fullness of times to restore all things in Christ, both the things that are in heaven and the things that are on earth, in him: in whom we too have obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we should be unto the praise of his glory (Eph 1:3-12): who, I say, would hear these things carefully and intelligently, and dare to doubt about this so clear truth which we defend? God chose his members in Christ before the foundation of the world: and how would he choose those who did not yet exist, except by predestining? He chose, then, predestining us. Would he choose the impious and the unclean? For if the question be posed, whether he chooses these, or rather the holy and immaculate, who would inquire which of these to answer, and not at once bring in the verdict for the holy and immaculate?

18. 36. "He foreknew, then," says the Pelagian, "who would be holy and immaculate through the choice of free will: and therefore he chose them before the foundation of the world in that foreknowledge of his, by which he foreknew that they would be such. He chose, then," he says, "before they existed, predestining as sons those whom he foreknew would be holy and immaculate: surely he himself did not make them, nor did he foresee that he would make them, but that they would be such."

Let us, then, look at the words of the Apostle, and see whether he chose us before the foundation of the world because we were going to be holy and immaculate, or that we should be. Blessed, he says, be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ: as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate (Eph 1:3-4).

Not, then, because we were going to be, but that we should be. Surely it is certain, surely it is manifest: for we were going to be such precisely because he chose us, predestining that we should be such through his grace. So, then, he blessed us with a spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate in his sight in love, predestining us unto the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ unto himself. Then attend to what he adds: according to the good pleasure, he says, of his will: lest, in so great a benefit of grace, we should boast of the good pleasure of our own will. In which he has made us pleasing, he says, in his beloved Son (Eph 1:5-6): that is, by which will of his he has made us pleasing. "He has made pleasing" is said from "grace," just as "he has justified" is said from "justice."

In whom we have, he says, redemption through his blood, the remission of sins according to the riches of his grace, which abounded in us in all wisdom and prudence, that he might show in us the mystery of his will, according to his good will (Eph 1:7-9). In this mystery of his will he placed the riches of his grace, according to his good will, not according to ours: which could not be good, unless he himself, according to his good will, came to our aid, that it might become good.

And when he had said, According to his good will, he added: which he purposed in him, that is, in his beloved Son, in the dispensation of the fullness of times to restore all things in Christ, both the things that are in heaven and the things that are on earth, in him: in whom we too have obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we should be unto the praise of his glory (Eph 1:11-12).

18. 37. It is too long to discuss each point. But you see, without doubt you see, with how great a manifestation of apostolic speech this grace is defended, against which human merits are exalted, as though a man should give something first, that it might be repaid to him. God chose us, then, in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestining us unto the adoption of sons: not because we were going to be holy and immaculate through ourselves, but he chose and predestined that we should be. And he did this according to the good pleasure of his will, that no one might boast of his own will, but of God's will toward him: he did this according to the riches of his grace, according to his good will, which he purposed in his beloved Son, in whom we have obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose, not ours, but his, who works all things—so much so that he himself works in us even the willing (See Phil 2:13).

But he works according to the counsel of his will, that we should be unto the praise of his glory. Hence it is that we cry out: that no one may boast in man (1 Cor 3:21), and thus not even in himself; but let him who boasts boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31), that we should be unto the praise of his glory. For he himself works according to his purpose, that we should be unto the praise of his glory, holy, of course, and immaculate, on account of which he called us, predestining us before the foundation of the world. From this purpose of his comes that calling proper to the elect, to whom all things work together unto good (Rom 8:28): because they are called according to the purpose, and the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.

19. 38. But these our brothers, of whom and for whom we are now pleading, perhaps say that the Pelagians are refuted by this apostolic testimony, where he says that we were chosen in Christ and predestined before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate in his sight in love. For they themselves think that "once the precepts are received, we now become, through ourselves, by the choice of free will, holy and immaculate in his sight in love: and because God foreknew that this would be," they say, "therefore he chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us in Christ";

whereas the Apostle says: Not because he foreknew that we would be such, but that we should be such through that election itself of his grace, by which he made us pleasing in his beloved Son. When, therefore, he predestined us, he foreknew his own work, by which he makes us holy and immaculate. Whence rightly by this testimony the Pelagian error is convicted. "But we say," they say, "that God foreknew nothing of ours except the faith by which we begin to believe, and therefore chose us before the foundation of the world, and predestined us, that we should also be holy and immaculate by his grace and his work." But let them too hear in this testimony, where he says: We have obtained our lot, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things.

He himself, then, works that we should begin to believe, who works all things. For that calling of which it was said, For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance (Rom 11:29); and of which it was said, Not from works, but from him who calls (Rom 9:12)—when he could have said: But from him who believes—and the election which the Lord signified, saying, You did not choose me, but I chose you (John 15:16): not even faith itself precedes these.

For not because we believed, but that we might believe, he chose us: lest we be said to have first chosen him, and that be false—which far be it—You did not choose me, but I chose you. Nor because we believed, but that we might believe, are we called: and by that calling, which is without repentance, this very thing is wholly brought about and accomplished, that we should believe. Nor need all be repeated about this matter, the many things we have said.

19. 39. Finally, in what follows this testimony too, the Apostle gives thanks to God for those who have believed—not, of course, because the gospel was announced to them, but because they believed. For he says: In whom you also, having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom believing you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the acquisition, unto the praise of his glory: for this reason I too, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and toward all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you (Eph 1:13-16). New and recent was their faith, the gospel having been preached to them, and on hearing of this faith the Apostle gives thanks to God for them. If he were giving thanks to a man for what he thought, or knew, the man had not bestowed, it would more truly be called flattery or mockery than thanksgiving. Do not err; God is not mocked (Gal 6:7): for even beginning faith is his gift, lest the Apostle's thanksgiving be rightly judged false or deceptive.

What of this? Does not the beginning of the faith of the Thessalonians appear—for which, nonetheless, the same Apostle gives thanks to God, saying: For this reason we too give thanks to God without ceasing, because, when you had received from us the word of the hearing of God, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, which works in you who have believed (1 Thess 2:13)? What is it that he gives thanks to God for here? Surely it is vain and empty, if he gives thanks to someone who himself did not do this. But because this is not vain and empty, surely God, to whom he gives thanks for this work, himself did it, that when they had received from the Apostle the word of the hearing of God, they should accept it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God. God, therefore, works in the hearts of men, by that calling according to his purpose, of which we have spoken much, that they may not hear the gospel in vain, but, having heard it, may be converted and believe, accepting it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God.

20. 40. That beginning of the faith of men too is a gift of God, the Apostle admonishes us, when he signifies this, saying in the Letter to the Colossians: Persist in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving, praying at the same time also for us, that God may open to us the door of his word, to speak the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am also in bonds, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak (Col 4:2-4). How is the door of the word opened, except when the understanding of the hearer is opened that he may believe, and, the beginning of faith having been made, may admit those things which are preached and discussed for the building up of wholesome doctrine; lest, through unbelief, his heart being closed, he should disapprove and reject the things that are said?

Whence also to the Corinthians he says: But I will remain at Ephesus until Pentecost; for a great and evident door has been opened to me, and there are many adversaries (1 Cor 16:8-9). What else can be understood here, except that, the gospel having been first preached there by him, many believed, and many adversaries of that same faith arose, according to that saying of the Lord:

No one comes to me, unless it has been given him by my Father (John 6:66); and: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it is not given (Matt 13:11)? The door, then, is opened in those to whom it is given: but the adversaries are many from among those to whom it is not given.

20. 41. Likewise to the same, in the second Letter, the same Apostle says: When I had come, he says, to Troas for the gospel of Christ, and a door had been opened to me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother: but bidding them farewell, I went out into Macedonia (2 Cor 2:12-13). To whom did he bid farewell, except to those who had believed, in whose hearts, namely, the door was opened to him as he preached the gospel? But attend to what he adds: But thanks be to God, he says, who always makes us triumph in Christ, and manifests the fragrance of his knowledge through us in every place: for we are the good fragrance of Christ to God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to some indeed a fragrance of death unto death, but to some a fragrance of life unto life (2 Cor 2:14-16). Behold for what the keenest soldier and most unconquered defender of grace gives thanks; behold for what he gives thanks: because the apostles are the good fragrance of Christ to God, both among those who are being saved by his grace, and among those who are perishing by his judgment. But that this may be less offensive to those who understand little, he himself admonishes, when he adds and says: And for these things who is competent? (2 Cor 2:16).

But let us return to the opening of the door, by which the Apostle signified the beginning of the faith of his hearers. For what is: Praying at the same time also for us, that God may open to us the door of the word (Col 4:3), except a most open demonstration that the very beginning of faith too is a gift of God? For it would not be sought from him in prayer, unless it were believed to be bestowed by him.

This gift of heavenly grace had descended upon that woman who sold purple, of whom, as Scripture says in the Acts of the Apostles: God had opened her understanding, and she attended to the things that were said by Paul (Acts 16:14). For she was so called, that she might believe. For God does what he wills in the hearts of men, whether by helping or by judging, so that even through them may be fulfilled what his hand and counsel predestined to be done (Acts 4:28).

20. 42. In vain, then, did they say that this too does not pertain to the matter we are discussing—namely, what we proved on the testimony of the Scripture of Kings and Chronicles: that when God wills something to be done which ought to be done only by men willing, their hearts are inclined that they should will it (1 Kgs 10:26; 1 Chr 12:18), by his inclining, of course, who works in us, in a wondrous and ineffable way, even the willing (Hilary, Letter 226, 7; see Rebuke and Grace 14.15). What else is this but to say nothing, and yet to contradict? Unless perhaps they gave you some reason why this seemed so to them, which you preferred to pass over in silence in your letters. But what that reason can be, I do not know. Or perhaps, because we showed that God did this in the hearts of men, and brought to this point the wills of those it pleased him—that Saul or David should be set up as king—do they therefore think these examples do not suit this matter, since to reign temporally in this world is not the same as to reign eternally with God; and accordingly suppose that God inclines men's wills to the making of earthly kingdoms, but does not incline the wills of those he willed to the obtaining of the heavenly kingdom?

But I think it was said on account of the kingdom of heaven, not on account of an earthly kingdom: Incline my heart unto your testimonies (Ps 119:36 (118:36)); or: By the Lord the steps of a man are directed, and he will choose his way (Ps 37:23 (36:23)); or: The will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 (LXX)); or: May the Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: may he not forsake us, nor turn us away from himself; may he incline our hearts to himself, that we may walk in all his ways (1 Kgs 8:57-58); or: I will give them a heart to know me, and ears that hear (Bar 2:31); or: I will give them another heart, and a new spirit I will give them (Ezek 11:19). Let them hear also this: I will put my Spirit within you, and I will make you walk in my statutes, and observe and do my judgments (Ezek 36:27); let them hear: By the Lord the steps of a man are directed; but how does a mortal understand his ways? (Prov 20:24); let them hear: Every man seems just to himself; but the Lord directs hearts (Prov 21:2); let them hear: As many believed as were ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48).

Let them hear these, and whatever others I have not mentioned, by which it is shown that God prepares and turns the wills of men even to the kingdom of heaven and to eternal life. But consider how strange it would be, that we should believe that God works the wills of men for the establishing of earthly kingdoms, but that for the laying hold of the kingdom of heaven men work their own wills.

21. 43. We have said many things, and perhaps we could long since have persuaded of what we wish, and yet we still speak to such good minds as though they were dull, for whom even what is too much is not enough. But let them pardon us; for a new question has compelled us to this. For when, in our earlier little works, we had argued with testimonies sufficiently fitting that faith too is a gift of God, an objection was found: that those testimonies avail to show that the increase of faith is a gift of God, but that the beginning of faith, by which one first believes in Christ, is from the man himself, and is not a gift of God, but that God requires this, so that when it has gone before, the rest may follow, as by this merit, which are the gifts of God: and that none of them is given freely, since in them the grace of God, which is nothing if not gratuitous, is preached.

Which you see how absurd it is; on account of which we have insisted, as far as we could, that we might show that the very beginning of faith too is a gift of God. And even if we have done this at greater length than perhaps those for whom we did it would wish, on this account we are ready to be reproached by them: provided only that—even if at much greater length than they would wish, even with the distaste and weariness of those who understand—they confess that we have done what we have done, that is, that we have taught that the beginning of faith too, like continence, patience, righteousness, devotion, and the rest, about which there is no contention with these men, is a gift of God. Here, then, let there be the end of this volume, lest the excessive length of one offend.