Chapter 56.—God Gives Means as Well as End.

Wherefore if I am unwilling to appear ungrateful to men who have loved me, because some advantage of my labour has attained to them before they loved me, how much rather am I unwilling to be ungrateful to God, whom we should not love unless He had first loved us and made us to love Him! since love is of Him,139    1 John iv. 7. as they have said whom He made not only His great lovers, but also His great preachers. And what is more ungrateful than to deny the grace of God itself, by saying that it is given to us according to our merits? And this the catholic faith shuddered at in the Pelagians, and this it objected to Pelagius himself as a capital crime; and this Pelagius himself condemned, not indeed from love of God’s truth, but yet for fear of his own condemnation. But whoever as a faithful catholic is horrified to say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, let him not withdraw faith itself from God’s grace, whereby he obtained mercy that he should be faithful; and thus let him attribute also perseverance to the end to God’s grace, whereby he obtains the mercy which he daily asks for, not to be led into temptation. But between the beginning of faith and the perfection of perseverance there are those means whereby we live righteously, which they themselves are agreed in regarding as given by God to us at the prayer of faith. And all these things—the beginning of faith, to wit, and His other gifts even to the end—God foreknew that He would bestow on His called. It is a matter therefore, of too excessive contentiousness to contradict predestination, or to doubt concerning predestination.

56. Quocirca, si hominibus, qui propterea me dilexerunt, quia pervenit ad eos, antequam me diligerent, aliqua mei laboris utilitas, nolo existere ingratus: quanto magis Deo, quem non diligeremus, nisi prius dilexisset nos, et fecisset dilectores suos? quoniam charitas ex ipso est (I Joan. IV, 7): sicut dixerunt quos fecit magnos, non solum amatores , verum etiam praedicatores suos. Quid est autem ingratius, quam negare ipsam gratiam Dei, dicendo eam secundum merita nostra dari? Quod in Pelagianis fides catholica exhorruit, quod ipsi Pelagio capitale crimen objecit: quod ipse Pelagius, non quidem amore veritatis Dei, sed tamen suae damnationis timore damnavit. Quisquis autem dicere gratiam Dei secundum merita nostra dari, sicut catholicus fidelis exhorret; nec ipsam fidem subtrahat Dei gratiae, qua misericordiam consecutus est ut fidelis esset: ac per hoc gratiae Dei tribuat perseverantiam quoque usque in finem, qua misericordiam consequitur, quam poscit quotidie, ne inferatur in tentationem. Inter initium autem fidei et perfectionem perseverantiae, media sunt illa, quibus recte vivimus, quae ipsi etiam donari nobis a Deo fide impetrante consentiunt. Haec autem omnia, initium scilicet fidei, et caetera usque in finem dona sua, Deus largiturum se vocatis suis esse praescivit. Nimiae igitur contentionis est, praedestinationi contradicere, vel de praedestinatione dubitare.