Annotation CLXXXIV
”But Jesus turning, and seeing them following, said to them, What seek ye?” — John 1:38
Whether the beginning of our salvation is from us.
Chrysostom, in the seventeenth homily on John, expounding these [words], is thought to be of this opinion — that the beginning of our salvation is so implanted in us by nature that, without the help of prevenient grace, we can by our own powers attain justification. Which savors of the dogma of the Pelagians. For thus he left [it] written in that place: “Hence we can be admonished that God does not, by his benefits toward us, forestall our wills, but that a beginning must be made by us: but when we show ourselves, with a prompt and prepared mind, ready to receive grace, then he offers us many occasions of salvation.”
John Cassian, a disciple of Chrysostom, placing himself in the middle between those who, with the catholics, affirm that we are prevented [forestalled] by the grace of God, and those who, with the Pelagians, assert that we forestall the grace of God, taught that some [men] anticipate the divine grace by their own will, but that the wills of some are anticipated by the divine grace. His words, in the thirteenth book of the Conferences, chapter 11, run thus: “Among many [it] is debated with a great question: whether God has mercy on us because we have furnished a beginning of good will; or [whether] because God has mercy, we obtain a beginning of good will? For many, believing these [things] singly, and asserting [them] more than is just, have been entangled in various and mutually contrary errors. For if we shall say that the beginning of good will is ours: what was there in the persecutor Paul, what in the Publican Matthew — of whom the one, brooding over the blood and torments of the innocent, the other over violences and public robberies, is [nonetheless] drawn to salvation? But if [we shall say] that the beginning of good will is always inspired by the grace of God
—the beginning [of good will], what shall we say of the faith of Zacchaeus, what of the piety of that thief on the cross — who, by their [own] desire bringing a certain violence upon the heavenly kingdoms, forestalled the special admonitions of [their] calling?” etc.
Prosper, bishop of Riez, disputed against the opinion of Cassian in a particular volume, entitled On Free Will; Gennadius, however, taking [it] ill — who, in the catalogue of illustrious writers, complains that the little works of Cassian, which the Church of God approves as salutary, were unworthily defamed by Prosper. What is to be thought concerning the opinion of Chrysostom, thou hast above, Annotation 101 of book 5.