These books were written in 428-429, and after their completion the unfinished work against Julian was resumed. Alypius had sent the remaining three books, and Augustin slowly toiled on to the end of his reply to the sixth book. But he was to be interrupted once more, and this time by the most serious of all interruptions. 'On the 28th of August, 430, with the Vandals thundering at the gates of Hippo, full of good works and of faith, he turned his face away from the strifes — whether theological or secular — of earth, and entered into rest with the Lord whom he loved. The last work against Julian was already one of the most considerable in size of all his books; but it was never finished, and retains until to-day the significant title of The Unfinished Work. Augustin had hesitated to undertake this work, because he found Julian's arguments too silly either to deserve refutation, or to afford occasion for really edifying discourse. And certainly the result falls below Augustin's usual level, though this is not due, as is so often said, to failing powers and great age; for nothing that he wrote surpasses in mellow beauty and chastened strength the two books, On the Predestination of the Saints, which were written after four books of this work were completed. The plan of the work is to state Julian's arguments in his own words, and follow it with his remarks; thus giving it something of the form of a dialogue. It follows Julian's work, book by book. The first book states and answers certain calumnies which Julian had brought against Augustin and the catholic faith on the ground of their confession of original sin. Julian had argued, that, since God is just, He cannot impute another's sins to inno- cent infants; since sin is nothing but evil will, there can be no sin in infants who are not yet in the use of their will; and, since the freedom of will that is given to man consists in the capacity of both sinning and not sinning, free will is denied to those who attribute sin to nature. Augustin replies to these arguments, and answers certain objections that are made to his work On Mar- riage and Concupiscence, and then corrects Julian's false explanations of certain Scriptures from John viii., Rom. vi., vii., and 2 Timothy. The second book is a discussion of Rom. v. 12, which Julian had tried, like the other Pelagians, to explain by the " imitation " of Adam's bad example. The third book examines the abuse by Julian of certain Old-Testament passages — in Deut. xxiv., 2 Kings xiv., Ezek. xviii. — in his effort to show that God does not impute the father's sins to the children; as well as his similar abuse of Heb. xi. The charge of Manicheism, which was so repetitiously brought by Julian against the catholics, is then examined and refuted. The fourth book treats of Julian's strictures on Augustin's On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 4-1 1, and Ixvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
proves from i John ii. i6 that concupiscence is evil, and not the work of God, but of the Devil. He argues that the shame that accompanies it is due to its sinfulness, and that there was none of it in Christ; also, that infants are born obnoxious to the first sin, and proves the corruption of their origin from Wisd. x. lo, ii. The fifth book defends On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 12 sq., and argues that a sound nature could not have shame on account of its members, and the need of regeneration for what is generated by means of shameful concupiscence. Then Julian's abuse of i Cor. xv., Rom, v.. Matt. vii. 1 7 and 2,Z^ with reference to On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 14, 20, 26, is discussed; and then the origin of evil, and God's treatment of evil in the world. The sixth book traverses Julian's strictures on On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 34 sq., and argues that human nature was changed for the worse by the sin of Adam, and thus was made not only sinful, but the source of sinners; and that the forces of free will by which man could at first do rightly if he wished, and refrain from sin if he chose, were lost by Adam's sin. He attacks Julian's definition of free will as " the capacity for sinning and not sinning " i^possibiliias peccandi et non peccandi); and proves that the evils of this life are the punishment of sin, — including, first of all, physical death. At the end, he treats of i Cor. xv. 22.
Although the great preacher of grace was taken away by death before the completion of this book, yet his work was not left incomplete. In the course of the next year (431) the QLcumeni- cal Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism for the whole world; and an elaborate treatise against the pure Pelagianism of Julian was already in 430 an anachronism. Semi- Pelagianism was yet to run its course, and to work its way so into the heart of a corrupt church as not to be easily displaced; but Pelagianism was to die with the first generation of its advocates. As we look back now through the almost millennium and a half of years that has intervened since Augus- tin lived and wrote, it is to his Predestination of the Saints, — a completed, and well-completed, treatise, — and not to The Unfinished Work, that we look as the crown and completion of his labours for grace.
IV. The Theology of Grace.
The theology which Augustin opposed, in his anti-Pelagian writings, to the errors of Pelagian- ism, is, shortly, the theology of grace. Its roots were planted deeply in his own experience, and in the teachings of Scripture, especially of that apostle whom he delights to call "the great preacher of grace," and to follow whom, in his measure, was his greatest desire. The grace of God in Jesus Christ, conveyed to us by the Holy Spirit and evidenced by the love that He sheds abroad in our hearts, is the centre around which this whole side ' of His system revolves, and the germ out of which it grows. He was the more able to make it thus central because of the harmony of this view of salvation with the general principle of his whole theology, which was theocentric and revolved around his conception of God as the immanent and vital spirit in whom all things live and move and have their being.^ In like manner, God is the absolute good, and all good is either Himself or from Him; and only as God makes us good, are we able to do anything good.
The necessity of grace to man, Augustin argued from the condition of the race as partakers of Adam's sin. God created man upright, and endowed him with human faculties, including free ' This is a necessary limitation, for there is another side — a churchly side — of Augustin's theology, which was only laid alongside of, and artificially combined with, his theology of grace. This was the traditional eXcmcnX. in his teaching, but was far from the determin- ing or formative element. As Thomasius truly points out {Dogineitg,'schichte, i. 495), both his experience and the Scriptures stood with him above tradition.
2 It is only one of the strange assertions in Professor Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought, that he makes " the Augustinian theology rest upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle " (p. 3), which is identified with " a tacit assumption of deism" (p. 171), and explained to include a " localization of God as a physical essence in the infinite remoteness," " separated from the world by infinite reaches of space." As a matter of mere fact, Augustin's conception of God was that of an immanent Spiiit, and his tendency was consequently distinctly towards a pantheistic rather than a deistic view of His relation to His creatures. Nor is this true only " at a ceruin suge of his career" (p. 6), which is but Professor Allen's attempt to reconcile fact with his theory, but of his whole life and all his teaching. He, no doubt, did not so teach the Divine immanence as to make God the author of <iS\^ form as well as the matter of all acts of His crea- tures, or to render it impossible for His creatures to turn from Him; this would be to pass the limits that separate the conception of Chris- tian immanence from pure pantheism, and to make God the author of sin, and all His creatures but manifestations of Himself.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Ixvii will; ' and gave to him freely that grace by which he was able to retain his uprightness.^ Being thus put on probation,^ with divine aid to enable him to stand if he chose, Adam used his free choice for sinning, and involved his whole race in his fall.^ It was on account of this sin that he died physically and spiritually, and this double death passes over from him to us.-* That all his descendants by ordinary generation are partakers in Adam's guilt and condemnation, Augustin is sure from the teachings of Scripture; and this is the fact of original sin, from which no one generated from Adam is free, and from which no one is freed save as regenerated in Christ.5 But how we are made partakers of it, he is less certain: sometimes he speaks as if it came by some mysterious unity of the race, so that we were all personally present in the individual Adam, and thus the whole race was the one man that sinned; ^ sometimes he speaks more in the sense of modern realists, as if Adam's sin corrupted the nature, and the nature now corrupts those to whom it is communicated; 7 sometimes he speaks as if it were due to simple heredity; * sometimes, again, as if it depended on the presence of shameful concupiscence in the act of procreation, so that the propagation of guilt depends on the propagation of offspring by means of concupiscence.^ How- ever transmitted, it is yet a fact that sin is propagated, and all mankind became sinners in Adam. The result of this is that we have lost the divine image, though not in such a sense that no linea- ments of it remain to us j '° and, the sinning soul making the flesh corruptible, our whole nature is corrupted, and we are unable to do anything of ourselves truly good." This includes, of course, an injury to our will. Augustin, writing for the popular eye, treats this subject in popular language. But it is clear that he distinguished, in his thinking, between will as a faculty and will in a broader sense. As a mere faculty, will is and always remains an indifferent thing,'^ — after the fall, as before it, continuing poised in indifferency, and ready, like a weathercock, to be turned whitherso- ever the breeze that blows from the heart ("will," in the broader sense) may direct.'^ It is not the faculty of willing, but the man who makes use of that faculty, that has suffered change from the fall. In paradise man stood in full ability: he had the posse non peccare, but not yet the non posse peccare; '■♦ that is, he was endowed with a capacity for either part, and possessed the grace of God by which he was able to stand if he would, but also the power of free will by which he might fall if he would. By his fall he has suffered a change, is corrupt, and under the power of Satan; his will (in the broader sense) is now injured, wounded, diseased, enslaved, — although the faculty of will (in the narrow sense) remains indifferent.'^ Augustin's criticism of Pelaglus' discrimination's of " capacity '■' {possibiiiias, posse), ^' w'xW^^ {voluntas, velle),2sA "act" {actio, esse), does not turn on the discrimination itself, but on the incongruity of placing the power, ability in the mere capacity or possibility, rather than in the living agent who " wills " and " acts."
He himself adopts an essentially similar distribution, with only this correction; '^ and thus keeps the faculty of will indifferent, but places the power of using it in the active agent, man. Accord- ing, then, to the character of this man, will the use of the free will be. If the man be holy he will make a holy use of it, and if he be corrupt he will make a sinful use of it: if he be essen- tially holy, he cannot (like God Himself) make a sinful use of his will; and if he be enslaved to sin, he cannot make a good use of it. The last is the present condition of men by nature. They have free will; '7 the faculty by which they act remains in indifferency, and they are allowed to use it just as they choose: but such as they cannot desire and therefore cannot choose anything but evil; '^ and therefore they, and therefore their choice, and therefore their willing, is always ' On Rebuke and Grace, 27, 28. ^ On Rebuke and Grace, 29, 31 sq. 3 On Rebuke and Grace, 28.
* On the City of God, xiii. 2, 12, 14; O71 the Trinity, iv. 13. 5 On the Merits and Remission of Sins, i. 15, and often.
6 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7; On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, iii. 14, 15.
' On Marriage and Concupiscence, ii. 57; On the City of God, xiv. 1. * Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7.
9 On Original Sin, 42. '° Retractations, ii. 24.
" Against Julian, iv. 3, 25, 26. Compare Thomasius' Dogmengeschichie, i. 501 and 507.
'^ On the Spirit and Letter, 58, '^ On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, ii. 30. '■< On Rebuke and Grace, 11.
'S On the Grace of Christ, 4 sq. ■& On the Predestination of the Saints, 10.
'^ Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 5. Epistle 215, 4 and often. " Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 7. Compare i. 5, 6.
Ixviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
evil and never good. They are thus the slaves of sin, which they obey; and while their free will avails for sinning, it does not avail for doing any good unless they be first freed by the grace of God. It is undeniable that this view is in consonance vnih modem psychology: let us once conceive of " the will " as simply the whole man in the attitude of willing, and it is immediately evident, that, however abstractly free the " will " is, it is conditioned and enslaved in all its action by the character of the willing agent: a bad man does not cease to be bad in the act of willing, and a good man remains good even in his acts of choice.
In its nature, grace is assistance, help from God; and all divine aid may be included under the term, — as well what may be called natural, as what may be called spiritual, aid.' Spiritual grace includes, no doubt, all external help that God gives man for working out his salvation, such as the law, the preaching of the gospel, the example of Christ, by which we may learn the right way; it includes also forgiveness of sins, by which we are freed from the guilt already incurred; but above all it includes that help which God gives by His Holy Spirit, working within, not without, by which man is enabled to choose and to do what he sees, by the teachings of the law, or by the gospel, or by the natural conscience, to be right.^ Within this aid are included all those spiritual exercises which we call regeneration, justification, perseverance to the end, — in a word, all the divine assistance by which, in being made Christians, we are made to differ from other men. Augustin is fond of representing this grace as in essence the writing of God's law (or of God's will) on our hearts, so that it appears hereafter as our own desire and wish; and even more prevalently as the shedding abroad of love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, given to us in Christ Jesus; therefore, as a change of disposition, by which we come to love and freely choose, in co-operation with God's aid, just the things which hitherto we have been unable to choose because in bondage to sin. Grace, thus, does not make void free will: 3 it acts through free will, and acts upon it only by liberating it from its bondage to sin, i.e., by liberating the agent that uses the free will, so that he is no longer enslaved by his fleshly lusts, and is enabled to make use of his free will in choosing the good; and thus it is only by grace that free will is enabled to act in good part. But just because grace changes the disposition, and so enables man, hitherto enslaved to sin, for the first time to desire and use his free will for good, it hes in the very nature of the case that it is prevenientA Also, as the very name imports, it is necessarily gratuitous; 5 since man is enslaved to sin until it is given, all the merits that he can have prior to it are bad merits, and deserve punishment, not gifts of favour. When, then, it is asked, on .the ground of what, grace is given, it can only be answered, "on the ground of God's infinite :mercy and undeserved favour." ^ There is nothing in man to merit it, and it first gives merit of •good to man. All men alike deserve death, and all that comes to them in the way of blessing is necessarily of God's free and unmerited favour. This is equally true of all grace. It is pre-eminently clear of that grace which gives faith, the root of all other graces, which is given of God, not to merits of good-will or incipient turning to Him, but of His sovereign good pleasure.' But equally with faith, it is true of all other divine gifts: we may, indeed, speak of " merits of good " as succeeding faith; but as all these merits find their root in faith, they are but " grace on grace," and men need God's mercy always, throughout this life, and even on the judgment day itself, when, if they are judged without mercy, they must be condemned.^ If we ask, then, why God gives grace, we can only answer that it is of His unspeakable mercy; and if we ask why He gives it to one rather than to another, what can we answer but that it is of His will? The sovereignty of grace results from its very gratuitousness: ^ where none deserve it, it can be given only of the sovereign good pleasure of the great Giver, — and this is necessarily inscrutable, but cannot be unjust. We can faintly perceive, indeed, some reasons why God may be supposed not ' Servian 26. * On Nature and Grace, 62. On the Grace 0/ Christ, 13. On Rebuke afid Grace, 2 sq.
3 On the Spirit and Letter, 52; On Grace and Free IViU, i sq. * On the Spirit and Letter, 60, and often.
5 On Nature and Grace, 4, and often. 6 On the Grace of Christ, 27, and often.
' On the Grace 0/ Christ, 34, and often. ^ On Grace and Free Will, 21. 9 On Grace and Free Will, 30, and often.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Ixix to have chosen to give His saving grace to all/ or even to the most;^ but we cannot under- stand why He has chosen to give it to just the individuals to whom He has given it, and to withhold it from just those from whom He has withheld it. Here we are driven to the apostle's cry, " Oh the depth of the riches both of the mercy and the justice of God! " 3 The effects of grace are according to its nature. Taken as a whole, it is the recreative princi- ple sent forth from God for the recovery of man from his slavery to sin, and for his reformation in the divine image. Considered as to the time of its giving, it is either operating or co-operating grace, i.e., either the grace that first enables the will to choose the good, or the grace that co-oper- ates with the already enabled will to do the good; and it is, therefore, also called t'lthtx prevenient or subsequent grace.-* It is not to be conceived of as a series of disconnected divine gifts, but as a constant efflux from God; but we may look upon it in the various steps of its operation in men, as bringing forgiveness of sins, faith, which is the beginning of all good, love to God, progressive power of good working, and perseverance to the end.s In any case, and in all its operations alike, just because it is power from on high and the living spring of a new and re-created life, it is irresistible and indefectible.^ Those on whom the Lord bestows the gift of faith working from within, not from without, of course, have faith, and cannot help believing. Those to whom perseverance to the end is given must persevere to the end. It is not to be objected to this, that many seem to begin well who do not persevere: this also is of God, who has in such cases given great blessings indeed, but not this blessing, of perseverance to the end. Whatever of good men have, that God has given; and what they have not, why, of course, God has not given it. Nor can it be objected, that this leaves all uncertain: it is only unknown to us, but this is not uncertainty; we cannot know that we are to have any gift which God sovereignly gives, of course, until it is given, and we therefore cannot know that we have perseverance unto the end until we actually persevere to the end; ^ but who would call what God does, and knows He is to do, uncertain, and what man is to do certain? Nor will it do to say that thus nothing is left for us to do: no doubt, all things are in God's hands, and we should praise God that this is so, but we must co-operate with Him; and it is just because it is He that is working in us the willing and the doing, that it is worth our while to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God has not determined the end without determining the appointed means.^ Now, Augustin argues, since grace certainly is gratuitous, and given to no preceding merits, — prevenient and antecedent to all good, — and, therefore, sovereign, and bestowed only on those whom God selects for its reception; we must, of course, believe that the eternal God has fore- known all this from the beginning. He would be something less than God, had He not foreknown that He intended to bestow this prevenient, gratuitous, and sovereign grace on some men, and had He not foreknown equally the precise individuals on whom He intended to bestow it. To foreknow is to prepare beforehand. And this is predestination.') He argues that there can be no objection to predestination, in itself considered, in the mind of any man who believes in a God: what men object to is the gratuitous and sovereign grace to which no additional difficulty is added by the necessary assumption that it was foreknown and prepared for from eternity. That predestination does not proceed on the foreknowledge of good or of faith,'° follows from its being nothing more than the foresight and preparation of grace, which, in its very idea, is gratuitous and not according to any merits, sovereign and according only to God's purpose, prevenient and in order to faith and good works. It is the sovereignty of grace, not its foresight or the prepara- tion for it, which places men in God's hands, and suspends salvation absolutely on his unmerited * On the Gift of Perseverance, i6; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ii. 15, 2 Epistle to Optatus, 190.
3 On the Predestination of the Saints, 17, i3.
•* On Grace and Free Will, 17; On the Proceedings 0/ Pelagius, 34, and often.
5 Compare Thomasius' Dogmengeschichte, i. 510.
6 On Rebuke and Grace, 40, 45; On the Predestination of the Saints, 13. ' On Rebuke and Grace, 40. 8 On the Gift of Perseverance, 56. 9 On the Predestination of the Saints, 36 sq.
*° On the Gift of Perseverance, 41 sq., 47.
Ixx INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
mercy. But just because God is God, of course, no one receives grace who has not been fore- known and afore-selected for the gift; and, as much of course, no one who has been foreknown and afore-selected for it, fails to receive it. Therefore the number of the predestinated is fixed, and fixed by God.' Is this fate? Men may call God's grace fate if they choose; but it is not fate, but undeserved love and tender mercy, without which none would be saved.^ Does it paralyze effort? Only to those who will not strive to obey God because obedience is His gift. Is it unjust? Far from it: shall not God do what He will with His own undeserved favour? It is nothing but gratuitous mercy, sovereignly distributed, and foreseen and provided for from all eternity by Him who has selected us in His Son.
When Augustin comes to speak of the means of grace, i.e., of the channels and circumstances of its conference to men, he approaches the meeting point of two very dissimilar streams of his theology, — his doctrine of grace and his doctrine of the Church, — and he is sadly deflected from the natural course of his theology by the alien influence. He does not, indeed, bind the conference of grace to the means in such a sense that the grace must be given at the exact time of the application of the means. He does not deny that "God is able, even when no man rebukes, to correct whom He will, and to lead him on to the wholesome mortification of repentance by the most hidden and most mighty power of His medicine." ^ Though the Gospel must be known in order that man may be saved* (for how shall they believe without a preacher?), yet the preacher is nothing, and the preachment is nothing, but God only that gives the increase.s He even has something like a distant glimpse of what has since been called the distinction between the visible and invisible Church, — speaking of men not yet born as among those who are " called according to God's purpose," and, therefore, of the saved who constitute the Church,^ — asserting that those who are so called, even before they believe, are " already children of God, enrolled in the memorial of their Father with unchangeable surety," 7 and, at the same time, allowing that there are many already in the visible Church who are not of it, and who can there- fore depart from it. But he teaches that those who are thus lost out of the visible Church are lost because of some fatal flaw in their baptism, or on account of post-baptismal sins; and that those who are of the " called according to the purpose " are predestinated not only to salvation, but to salvation by baptism. Grace is not tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred save in the means; but it is tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred without the means. Baptism, for instance, is absolutely necessary for salvation: no exception is allowed except such as save the principle, — baptism of blood (martyrdom),^ and, somewhat grudgingly, baptism of intention. And baptism, when worthily received, is absolCitely efficacious: " if a man