XXXIV. These things are confirmed by the suffrage of other witnesses; Atto of Vercelli

Indeed, that I may begin to enumerate witnesses and adduce testimonies—if not all of them, at least those which I have at hand—Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, who flourished in the tenth century and

whose works have always been held in the highest esteem by learned and erudite theologians¹, writes² upon the words³ of Paul, “who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”:

If God indeed, who is called omnipotent, wills all men to be saved, why is his will not fulfilled? But in every utterance a sense and condition lie hidden. Whence the Apostle Peter says⁴: “Every Scripture requires interpretation.” For God wills all to be saved, but if they approach him. For he does not so will that the unwilling be saved; but he wills them to be saved if they themselves also will. For indeed, he who gave the law to all excepted no one from salvation. Does not a physician therefore set himself forth publicly, in order to show that he wills to save all, provided nevertheless that he is sought by the sick? For salvation is not true if it is bestowed upon one unwilling; nor can he rejoice in the salvation received who unwillingly—if this can nevertheless occur—receives the medicine; not to mention that the medicine cannot have its effect unless the sick man applies his mind to it. For this medicine is not corporeal but spiritual, and it profits neither the doubtful nor the envious. For it is faith which gives salvation; unless the mind receives it with its whole will, it will not only profit nothing but will even do harm. For the grace of faith has this power: that it infuses divine healing into those devoted to it, but confers upon the undevout a disease through which the old man perishes.

But the things which immediately follow⁵, “For there is one God, one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” he explains with this commentary⁶:

He signifies that the will of God and of Christ is one in saving men; whence he confesses that God the Father, because from him is all⁷ authority, is one, and that there is one mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus.

For, being sent by the Father and made an arbiter, he reconciled God and men by reforming them unto the knowledge of him. For because the Father and the Son are one, not in person but in undiffering nature, the Son of God, in order that he might be the arbiter of God and men, assumed flesh and was born man, so that the man Christ Jesus might be mediator of God and men—that is, not without divinity, because man was in God and God in man—and so that he might be mediator from both and reconcile both, he first effected this in himself. For, while preserving the unity of God, he could not be called mediator of God and men as though he were another God who should recall dissenting man into favor with God; but as man, who did not transgress the law given, he was made arbiter between him who sinned and him who knows not how to sin, so that the latter might forgive and man might thereafter remain in the faith of God.

Therefore the salvific will of God the Father and of his Christ is one: one by ontological unity, because the Father and Christ are one God; one by moral unity, because Christ is God in such a manner that he is at the same time man, who never failed to prefer the human will conformed to the paternal will.

But this one salvific will of the Father and of Christ embraces all men and excludes no one. It is indeed universal, and also especially efficacious and active. The signs and arguments of its efficacy are both the laws enacted for all and the universal economy of the Mediator, and then the power given to all of obtaining salvation, if they will.

By this manner of thinking and speaking we are taught that the salvific will ought to be and to be called neither simply absolute nor simply affected by a condition, but partly absolute and partly hypothetical. It is absolute and free from condition in its origin, since it is native to God and flows from his innate

benignity; it is again absolute and free from condition with respect to those benefits which are pure gifts and of which God is the sole and adequate cause; but, conversely, hypothetical and affected by a condition with respect to those benefits which are gifts in such a manner that they are at the same time wages and reward, and of which God is therefore not the sole and adequate cause, but the principal and supreme cause.

This economy of the salvific will is such that it alone befits God, alone corresponds to the realities, and alone is suited to men.

It alone befits God, since it depicts to the life his infinite φιλανθρωπίαν, love of mankind, and ascribes and vindicates to him the primacy in the order of salvation.

It alone accords with the realities; for men could not emerge from darkness, put off their former weakness, and strive with their whole mind toward that beatitude which is God unless God made the beginning, prepared them, and advanced those prepared to a certain new life.

It alone is suited to men, whose hope it no more raises than it inflames their diligence, and whose desire of felicity it no more sharpens than it persuades them of the necessity of observing their duties. For by this economy of the salvific will it is brought about that both the moral and the eudaemonic orders are recalled to harmony, and that the σκοπός, scope and supreme end, of the latter is shown to be the reward and crown of the former.