Annotation CLXXIX

[the print misnumbers this “ANNOTATIO LXXIX,” dropping the leading C]

“It was the true light.” — John 1:9

Whether faith is lost through [mortal] sin.

John Ferus, in the exposition of this passage: “He, therefore,” he says, “who acts impiously — fearing that he would be tormented by hunger if he lived piously — does not believe Christ to be God.” Domingo de Soto, disapproving these words in his Annotations against Ferus, says: “He seems to reckon all who are in mortal sin [as] acting impiously; for he appears to bring forward examples of those who, lest they be tormented by hunger, fal-

steal; and of those who, succumbing to another disease [vice], perpetrate another evil. But to say that all delinquents of this kind do not believe Christ to be God, is an error condemned at Trent — namely, that faith is lost through any [kind of] mortal offense, since it is not lost except through unbelief.” These [things] he [Soto says]. Michael Medina, refuting this kind of censure in his Apologeticum, says: “In confuting these [things], many [things] would indeed have to be said by us, by which we might assail his petty reasonings, did we not fear the increase of a large volume, and were we unwilling to exceed Christian modesty. Only so much is to be brought forward by us in this part [as shows] how far Soto departs from the Christian manner of speaking, [Soto] who condemns the very first elements of the words of God. Who — a Christian [even] of three months old — is ignorant that it is rightly and most Christianly said that sinners, whoever they be, lose the Christian faith, especially in that part in which they most obstinately sin? Not that that barren faith — to which the vice of idolatry, or of unbelief, is opposed — vanishes when a mortal sin is committed (for this the Lutherans have foolishly held, being ignorant of the phrase of the Scriptures, which calls ‘faith’ only that [faith] which, joined to charity, produces the glorious fruits of works); but that, by the plain manner of speaking which sacred Scripture always observes, that languid and nerveless credulity, from which altogether contrary acts are derived, is judged unworthy of the name of ‘faith.’¹ ‘They confess,’ says the Apostle, ‘of certain [men], that they know God, but by [their] deeds they deny [him]; being abominable, and incredulous, and reprobate to every good work.’ Behold, here the Apostle calls unbelievers [those] sinners who, although they confessed with the mouth, yet by [their] deeds produced works contrary to faith. And elsewhere,² ‘If anyone has not care of his own, especially of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.’ Not that in these passages the Apostle Paul means that unformed faith vanishes through a mortal offense; but that he does not believe entire faith to stand together with a perverse perseverance in enormous offenses — which [entire faith] alone Christ and the sanction of the evangelical law demand.”