Preambles on the Various Errors concerning Grace

St. Thomas, I^a II^ae, from q. 109 to q. 114.

[Concerning grace there have come forth errors extremely opposed. Some denied grace, lest they injure liberty. Others rejected free will, that they might establish grace.

Pelagius, a Briton by nation, whether Englishman, or Scotsman, or Irishman, about the year 405 began to spread his errors, of which he had the more celebrated patrons and assertors Coelestius, whose fatherland is unknown, and Julian, by fatherland and episcopate an Eclanensian.

The Pelagians said at first that man has from God only possibility or faculty of good, but from himself alone the use or will and action of this possibility. Nevertheless, pressed by the arguments of Catholics, beyond free will, external law and doctrine, they seem afterwards to have admitted something of interior grace, not only illuminating the intellect, but also adding firmness to the will: and this help they affirmed to be not absolutely necessary, but useful only for operating good, nor gratuitously conferred, but owed to the merits of nature. But upon three principal errors the Pelagians pertinaciously adhered. The first is, that no sin was handed down from Adam unto posterity, but that the first parent harmed us only by his own example, and therefore our nature was nowise vitiated, nor consequently is grace necessary, but it is conferred upon those living well only that they may worship God more easily and more perfectly; yet baptism is profitably conferred on infants, not that they be cleansed from sin, but that the grace bestowed thereon make them heirs of the heavenly kingdom. The second error, flowing thence, is that grace is given us according to our merits. The third is, that men, using well their free will, arrive at such perfection as to be able to avoid every sin, even original, without grace. Unto these errors are reduced others, namely: concupiscence is not evil, because it is a property of nature; the miseries of this life are not penalties of original sin; Adam, even if he had not sinned, would have died just the same; little ones dying without baptism enjoy a certain beatitude, not however that which is proper to the heavenly kingdom, and the same must be said of adult infidels who observed the natural law. All know that concerning actual grace of good will and action necessary for each act of piety, gratuitously conferred and not from the merits of nature, there was a long and bitter contest between Augustine and the Pelagians.

The Socinians, under Faustus Socinus the Sienese leader, born in the year 1539, agree entirely with the Pelagians; following whose footsteps the rationalists have fallen into the same errors. In the system of these men, the man of paradise was nothing but a primitive type of ideal perfection, unto which the posterity of him are summoned to refer themselves, to which is added another type far more excellent in Christ Jesus. For man, by a natural principle of perfectibility, can always proceed further in attaining perfection, so that he can not only refer himself to the type, but even surpass it. The same profess that there is given no supernatural state from which man has fallen, or unto which he ought be recalled: whence man needs no grace, either to avoid evil, or to pursue good.

The Semi-Pelagians, among whom the most celebrated was Joannes Cassianus, were thus called because, departing from Pelagius in some things, in others they adhered to him. They admitted original sin and the necessity of grace for working eternal salvation.

They denied however that predestination, whether to grace or to glory, is gratuitous, but taught that God predestined from eternity unto grace those whom he foresaw would consent to him and use it well, and unto glory those whom he foreknew would persevere in grace of themselves. Hence they denied the necessity of grace, both unto the beginning of salvation, which they placed in the affection of credulity [belief], in petition or desire of salvation, or even in the very consent bestowed to grace offered; both unto perseverance, unto which they asserted grace not required, because it lies in our power. For the beginning of salvation and perseverance, in their sentiment, coincide in this, that when we first begin to consent to God, it is the beginning of salvation, while truly remaining in the consent bestowed even unto the end, it is perseverance. And although they often contradicted themselves, and at one time spoke as Catholics, at another as Pelagians, yet this seems to have been the final station of this heresy, namely that to consent to grace or dissent is so ours that in those who consent the consent is not from the grace of God, but from themselves; and thus they withdrew from grace the beginning of salvation and perseverance and ascribed them to free will.

On the contrary indeed the innovators of the sixteenth century, Luther especially and Calvin, saying that the integrity and supernatural state of the first parent was an essential part of human nature, taught the following: 1° By original sin human nature was so vitiated in its essential part that it retained nothing sound and integral. 2° Man lost free will, so that he was destitute of every act and power, whether in intellect or in will, not only for pious motions, but for eliciting works morally honest themselves. 3° These works done without grace are so many vices and sins. 4° Grace compels man to act, so that it infers upon the human will an ineluctable necessity. Whence, according to that doctrine, man holds himself passively under grace, and does nothing toward assenting to or cooperating with that same grace. With all these things Calvin prepared for himself the way unto his chief dogma, namely that God predestined and reprobated men independently of their foreseen merits and demerits, both in execution and in intention. Predes-