Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, both repeats and explains all these things in the book On the Omnipotence of God1, writing:
The omnipotence of God does not carry out its acts with only one hand, but with two, namely, those of mercy and judgment; by this law, namely, that it first endeavors to operate with the hand of mercy, and when with that hand, pride resisting it, it has been unable to perform that mighty work, then at length, extending the other hand, the hand of judgment, it breaks like vessels of the potter those whom it could not soften.
Therefore God rules men with a twofold hand and pursues them with a twofold will, the will of mercy and the will of judgment; yet these two wills are not coordinated with one another, but are mutually subordinated.
For the will of mercy precedes, by which God embraces absolutely all men, anticipates all with his benefits, and honors them with gifts; nor does the will of judgment follow before men by their contumacy have rendered vain the activity of mercy and deprived the indulgence of the merciful Deity of its desired fruits.
Augustine had anticipated this much earlier and had signified it in express words2, saying:
He who, when called, does not come, just as he had no merit of reward that he should be called, so begins to have the merit of punishment when, after being called, he has neglected to come. Thus there will be those two things: “Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord.” The calling pertains to mercy; the punishment of those who have neglected to come pertains to judgment.
Footnotes
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Chap. XI. William Cave has these things concerning Rupert in the Literary History at the twelfth century: “What his opinion concerning the Eucharist was, Baronius himself explains at the year 1111. He fell incautiously, he says, into the error by which he asserted that in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist the whole body and blood of Christ is truly present in such a way that the very substance of the bread and wine also remains whole. This error was condemned in the Lateran Council under Pope Innocent IV. Or, as Bellarmine perhaps explains Rupert’s opinion more clearly in On Ecclesiastical Writers, under Rupert: Rupert’s error is situated in this, that he thought the bread is not converted into the body of Christ when the Eucharist is confected, but is assumed by the divine Word in the manner in which humanity was assumed.” But Gabriel Gerberon, in the Apology for Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, published at Paris in 1669, examined Rupert’s doctrine much more diligently and learnedly and subtly vindicated it from every mark of error. ↩
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On Eighty-three Questions, q. LXIII. ↩