is not more necessary than his goodness. But the devil is by his fall so alienated from communion with all that is good, that he can do nothing but what is evil. But if any one should sacrilegiously object, that little praise is due to God for his goodness, which he is constrained to preserve; shall we not readily reply, that his inability to do evil arises from his infinite goodness, and not from the impulse of violence? Therefore if a necessity of doing well impairs not the liberty of the Divine will in doing well; if the devil, who cannot but do evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily; who then will assert that man sins less voluntarily, because he is under a necessity of sinning? This necessity Augustine every where maintains, and even when he was pressed with the cavils of Celestius, who tried to throw an odium on this doctrine, he confidently expressed himself in these terms: "By means of liberty it came to pass that man fell into sin; but now the penal depravity consequent on it, instead of liberty, has introduced necessity." And whenever the mention of this subject occurs, he hesitates not to speak in this manner of the necessary servitude of sin. We must therefore observe this grand point of distinction, that man, having been corrupted by his fall, sins voluntarily, not with reluctance or constraint; with the strongest propensity of disposition, not with violent coercion; with the bias of his own passions, and not with external compulsion: yet such is the pravity of his nature, that he cannot be excited and biassed to any thing but what is evil. If this be true, there is no impropriety in affirming, that he is under a necessity of sinning. Bernard, subscribing to what is said by Augustine, thus expresses himself: "Among all the animals, man alone is free: and yet by the intervention of sin, he also suffers a species of violence: but from the will, not from nature, so that he is not thereby deprived of his innate liberty." For what is voluntary is also free. And a little after: "The will being, by I know not what corrupt and surprising means, changed for the worse, is itself the author of the necessity to which it is subject; so that neither necessity, being voluntary, can excuse the will, nor the will, being fascinated, can exclude necessity." For this necessity is in some measure voluntary. Afterwards he says, that we are oppressed with a yoke, but no other than that of a voluntary

servitude; that therefore our servitude renders us miserable, and our will renders us inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. At length he concludes, "Thus the soul, in a certain strange and evil manner, under this kind of voluntary and free yet pernicious necessity, is both enslaved and free: enslaved by necessity, free by its will; and, what is more wonderful and more miserable, it is guilty, because free; and enslaved wherein it is guilty: and so therein enslaved wherein it is free." From these passages the reader clearly perceives that I am teaching no novel doctrine, but what was long ago advanced by Augustine with the universal consent of pious men, and which for nearly a thousand years after was confined to the cloisters of monks. But Lombard, for want of knowing how to distinguish necessity from coaction, gave rise to a pernicious error.

VI. It is necessary on the other hand to consider the remedy of divine grace, by which the depravity of nature is corrected and healed. For since the Lord, in the assistance which he affords us, bestows on us that which we need, an exhibition of the nature of his work in us will immediately discover the nature of our necessity. When the Apostle tells the Philippians, that he is "confident that he which hath begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ;" (e) by the beginning of a good work he undoubtedly designs the commencement of conversion which takes place in the will. Therefore God begins the good work in us by exciting in our hearts a love, desire, and ardent pursuit of righteousness; or, to speak more properly, by bending, forming, and directing our hearts towards righteousness: but he completes it by confirming us to perseverance. That no one may cavil, that the good work is begun by the Lord, inasmuch as the will, which is weak of itself, is assisted by him; the Spirit declares in another place how far the ability of the will reaches, when left to itself. "A new heart also," says he, “will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within

(e) Phil. i. 6.

you, and cause you to walk in my statutes." (f) Who will assert that the infirmity of the human will is only strengthened by assistance, to enable it efficaciously to aspire to the choice of that which is good; when it actually needs a total transformation and renovation? If there be in a stone any softness, which by some application being made more tender would be flexible in every direction, then I will not deny the flexibility of the human heart to the obedience of rectitude, provided its imperfections are supplied by the grace of God. But if by this similitude, the Lord intended to shew that no good will ever be extracted from our hearts, unless they are entirely renewed, let us not divide between him and us, what he claims exclusively to himself. If, therefore, when God converts us to the pursuit of rectitude, this change is like the transformation of a stone into flesh, it follows, that whatever belongs to our own will is removed, and what succeeds to it is entirely from God. The will, I say, is removed, not considered as the will; because in the conversion of man, the properties of our original nature remain entire. I assert also, that it is created anew, not that the will then begins to exist, but that it is then converted from an evil into a good one. This I affirm to be done entirely by God, because, according to the testimony of the same Apostle, "We are not sufficient" even "to think." (g) Therefore he elsewhere declares, not merely that God assists the infirmity of our will, or corrects its depravity, but that he "worketh in us to will." (h) Whence it is easy to infer what I have already remarked, that whatever good is in the human will, is the work of pure grace. In the same sense he elsewhere pronounces that it is "God which worketh all in all." (i) For in that place he is not discussing the government of the universe, but asserting that the praise of all the excellencies found in the faithful belongs to God alone. And by using the word "all," he certainly makes God the author of spiritual life from its commencement even to its termination. This is the same as he had before taught in other words, declaring that the faithful are "of God in Christ;" (k) where he evidently intends the new (h) Phil. ii, 13.

(f) Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27.
(i) 1 Cor. xii. 6.

VOL. I.

(g) 2 Cor. iii. 5.
(*) 1 Cor. i. 30.

2 R

creation, by which what belonged to our common nature is abolished. For we must here understand an implied contrast between Adam and Christ, which he states more plainly in another place, where he teaches that "we are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (1) For by this argument he designs to prove that our salvation is gratuitous, because the beginning of all good is from the second creation which we obtain in Christ. Now if we possessed any ability, though ever so small, we should also have some portion of merit. But to annihilate all our pretensions, he argues that we have merited nothing, because "we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained:" in which expressions he again signifies that all the parts of good works, even from the first inclination of the mind, are entirely from God. For this reason the Psalmist, after having said that "he (God) hath made us," that there may be no division of the work, immediately subjoins, "and not we ourselves.” (m) That he speaks of regeneration, which is the commencement of the spiritual life, is evident from the context, where it follows immediately after, that "we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." We see then, that not content with having simply attributed to God the praise of our salvation, he expressly excludes us from all fellowship with him; as though he would say, that man has not even the smallest particle remaining in which he can glory, because all is of God.

VII. But there may be some, who will concede that the will, being of its own spontaneous inclination averse to what is good, is converted solely by the power of the Lord: yet in such a manner, that being previously prepared, it has also its own share in the work: that grace, as Augustine teaches, precedes every good work, the will following grace, not leading it, being its companion, not its guide. This unobjectionable observation of that holy man, Peter Lombard preposterously wrests to an erroneous meaning. Now I contend that both in the words of the Prophet which I have cited, and in other passages, these two things are clearly signified, that the Lord corrects our (m) Psalm c. 3.

(2) Eph. ii. 10.

depraved will, or rather removes it, and of himself introduces a good one in its place. As it is preceded by grace, I allow you to style it an attendant; but since its reformation is the work of the Lord, it is wrong to attribute to man a voluntary obedience in following the guidance of grace. Therefore it is not a proper expression of Chrysostom, that grace is able to effect nothing without the will, nor the will without grace; as if grace did not produce the will itself, as we have just seen from Paul. Nor was it the intention of Augustine, when he called the human will the companion of grace, to assign to it any secondary office next to grace in the good work: but with a view to refute the nefarious dogma broached by Pelagius, who made the prime cause of salvation to consist in human merit, he contends, what was sufficient for his present argument, that grace is prior to all merit; omitting, at this time, the other question concerning the perpetual efficiency of grace, which is admirably treated by him on other occasions. For when he frequently says, that the Lord precedes the unwilling that he may will, and follows the willing that he may not will in vain: he makes him the sole author of the good work. His language on this subject is too explicit to require much argument. "Men labour," says he, "to discover in our will something that is our own, and not derived from God: and how any such discovery can be made, I know not." In his first book against Pelagius and Celestius, where he explains that declaration of Christ, "Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me," (n) he says, that "the will is assisted so as to enable it not only to know its duty, but what it knows also to do." And thus when God teacheth not by the letter of the law, but by the grace of the Spirit, he teacheth in such a manner, that whatever each one has learned, he not only sees in knowing it, but desires in willing, and performs in doing.

VIII. And as we are now engaged on the principal point of the argument, let us give the reader a summary of the doctrine, and prove it by a few very clear testimonies of Scripture: and then, that no one may accuse us of perverting the

(n) John vi. 45.