The True Doctrines of Grace Condemns both Calvinism & Molinist Jesuitism.

1. We know too well that man, of his own nature, cannot but to work out always the power of sinning and of resisting grace; and that, since he became corrupt, he unhappily carries in his breast a fount of concupiscence which infinitely augments that power; but that, notwithstanding this, when it pleases God to visit him with His mercy, by the preaching of His Word or by His holy sacraments, He makes the soul do what He wills, and in the manner He wills it to be done, promoting in it faith, the first of graces; while, at the same time, the infallibility of the divine operation does not in any way destroy the usual freedom of man, in consequence of the secret and wonderful ways by which God operates this change. This has been most admirably explained by St. Augustine, in such a way as to dissipate all those imaginary inconsistencies which the opponents of efficacious grace suppose to exist between the sovereign power of grace over the free-will and the power which the free-will has to resist grace.

2. For, according to this great doctor, whom the whole true Church have held to be a standard authority on this subject, God transforms the heart of man, by shedding abroad in it a heavenly sweetness, which surmounting the delights of the flesh, and inducing him to feel, on the one hand, his own mortality and nothingness, and to discover, on the other hand, the majesty & eternity of God, makes him conceive a distaste for the pleasures of sin which interpose between him and incorruptible happiness. Finding his chiefest joy in the God who charms him, his soul is drawn towards Him infallibly, but of its own accord, by a motion perfectly free, spontaneous, love-impelled; so that it would be its torment and punishment to be separated from Him. Not but that the person has always the power of forsaking his God, and that he may not actually forsake Him, provided he choose to do it. But how could he choose such a course, seeing that the will always inclines to that which is most agreeable to it, and that, in the case we now suppose, nothing can be more agreeable than the possession of that one good, which comprises in itself all other good things? ‘Quod enim (says Augustine) amplius nos delectat, secundum operemur necesse est’—‘Our actions are necessarily determined by that which affords us the greatest pleasure.’

3. Such is the manner in which God regulates the free will of man without encroaching on its freedom, and in which the free will, which always may, but never will, resist His grace, turns to God with a movement as voluntary as it is irresistible, whensoever He is pleased to draw it to Himself by the sweet constraint of His efficacious inspirations. And thus we fully understand Calvin`s error, which consists in maintaining that the will, when under the influence of grace, has not the power of resisting it.

4. These are the divine principles of St. Augustine and Aquinas too, --following him, since all doctors of the Christian Church so have taught from old, according to the Scriptures-- according to which it is equally true that we have the power of resisting grace, contrary to Calvin’s opinion. -- On the same principle, it follows that we act of ourselves, and thus, in opposition to another error of Calvin, that we have merits which are truly and properly ours; and yet, as God is the first principle of our actions, and as, in the speech of St. Paul, He ‘worketh in us that which is pleasing in his sight;’ our merits are but the free gifts of God.

5. And by means of this distinction we demolish the irreverent sentiment of other errorists, namely, that ‘we combine forces in no way whatever towards our salvation any more than inanimate things;’ &, by the same mode of reasoning, we overthrow the equally profane sentiment of the semi-pelagian Jesuit school of Molina, who will not allow that it is by the infallible strength of divine grace, working by the Means instituted by God, that we are enabled to consent with it in the work of our salvation, and who thereby comes into hostile collision with that principle of faith established by St. Paul: ‘That it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do.’

6. In fine, in this way we reconcile all those passages of Scripture which seem quite inconsistent with each other such as the following: ‘Turn ye unto God’—’Turn thou us, and we shall be turned’—’Cast away iniquity from you’—’It is God who taketh away iniquity from His people’—’Bring forth works meet for repentance’—’Lord, thou hast wrought all our works in us’—’Make ye a new heart and a new spirit’—’A new spirit will I give you, and a new heart will I create within you,’ &c.

7. The only way of reconciling these presumed contrarieties, which ascribe our good actions at one time to God and at another time to ourselves, is to keep in view the distinction, as stated by St. Augustine, that ‘our actions [since regenerated by the efficacious Word] are ours in respect of the free will which produces them; but that they are also of God, in respect of His grace which enables our free will to produce them;’ and that, as the same writer elsewhere remarks, ‘God enables us to do what is pleasing in his sight, by making us will to do even what we might have been unwilling to do.’

8. Thus, we can assert with full conviction, that when efficacious grace moves the free will, it infallibly consents; because the effect of grace is such, that, although the will has the power of withholding its consent, it nevertheless consents in effect. Therefore, we can say: The will of God cannot fail to be accomplished; and, accordingly, when it is his pleasure that a man should consent to the influence of grace, he consents infallibly, and even necessarily, not by an absolute necessity, but by a necessity of infallibility.

9. In effecting this, divine grace does not trench upon ‘the power which man has to resist it, if he wishes to do so;’ it merely prevents him from wishing to resist it.

10. The Word & the wise doctrine of the greater divines condemns Calvin and his school, since he denies that efficacious grace acts on the free will in the manner which has been so long believed in the orthodox Christian Church, so as to leave it in the power of free will to consent or not to consent; whereas, according to St. Augustine, we have always the power of withholding our consent if we choose; -- although at last we don't do it, for that necessity of infallibility, consistent with the Election of Grace. And according to St. Prosper, God bestows even upon his elect the will to persevere, in such a way as not to deprive them of the power to will the contrary, although they, finally, never do it.

© Cristo Nuestra Justicia ~ 2008.