Nevertheless, lest anything should be lacking—if not for faith, certainly as regards the understanding of faith—and lest even the more captious should have anything which they might allege or anywhere to which they might retreat, he both explains the difficulty by which the predestinarians seemed to be more vehemently moved, and demonstrates by witnesses adduced by name the consensus of the Catholic name with the Roman faith.
He meets the difficulty when, to one asking1 why not all are saved if God, as Paul2 speaks, wills all men to be saved, and if, as Peter3 writes, he wills no one to perish but all to be converted to penance, he responds that the Truth himself, through John the Evangelist, removed every doubt from the midst. “This is the judgment,” he says4, “because the light came into the world, and men loved darkness more than the light; for their works were evil.” Whence Saint Augustine says5:
How did some do a good work, that they might come to the light, that is, to Christ; and how did some love darkness? If he found all sinners and heals all from sin, and that serpent in which the death of the Lord was figured heals those who had been bitten, and the serpent was raised up on account of the serpent’s bites—that is, the death of the Lord on account of mortal men whom he found unjust—how is this understood: “This is the judgment, because the light came into the world, and men loved darkness more than the light; for their works were evil”? What is this? For whose works were
evil? Did you not come to justify the impious? But, he says, they loved darkness more than the light. There he placed the force. For many loved their sins; because he who confesses his sins and accuses his sins already acts with God. God accuses your sins; if you also accuse them, you are joined to God. There are, as it were, two things: man and sinner. What you hear as man, God made; what you hear as sinner, man himself made. Destroy what you made, so that God may save what he made.
The difficulty having been leveled, he proceeds to the witnesses and, having transcribed their very words, demonstrates that the doctrine and profession of the Catholic name did not differ even in the least from the faith of the Roman Church concerning the salvific will of God and the order of universal reparation. Above the rest he commends these witnesses6: Dionysius, whom blessed Gregory calls the Areopagite, an ancient and venerable Father; Cyprian, a wondrous doctor and magnificent martyr; blessed Hilary, a Catholic doctor who, on account of his excellent doctrine, is called the lucifer of the Romans; Saint Athanasius of Alexandria; Saint Ambrose, whose judgments are the firmest columns of faith and the Church and of all virtues; Saint John, Bishop of Constantinople, who, on account of the sweetness of his salutary and savorous eloquence, was most worthily called by the Greeks Chrysostomos, that is, Golden Mouth; Saint Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria; Saint Jerome, most skilled in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages, who, as is said, breaking the nut close to the kernel, merited, by investigating, to penetrate the marrow and the very entrails of Sacred Scripture under the inspiration of the Lord; Saint Cyril of Alexandria; Saint Augustine, a most sagacious and also most learned man; Prosper, a most learned and most religious man; Saint Celestine; Saint Leo, a most religious and learned man, and very copious in the eloquence of most honorable speech; Pope Saint Felix; Saint Gregory; the venerable priest Bede; and lastly Cassiodorus.
From this most ample number of witnesses it is pleasing to report the words of Ambrose alone, which Hincmar himself also used and from which
the mind and doctrine of the others may very easily be understood. Ambrose, therefore, wrote upon these words7 of the Psalmist, “Thou hast dealt in goodness with thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word”:
How good is the God of Israel to those who are upright of heart! Therefore he is good to all, because he wills all to be upright of heart. But he who turns aside his heart turns the grace of the divine goodness away from himself. God is always good, and therefore Paul says8: “Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God.” For goodness is toward all; severity, toward the few. Finally the same Apostle added: “Toward those indeed who have fallen, severity; but toward thee, goodness.” For if they had not fallen, they too would surely enjoy the goodness of God. For he is also good to thee because thou remainest. But if thou dost not remain in goodness, thou also shalt be cut off. Therefore God does not on that account cease to be good because thou hast fallen and hast need of severity, provided that, in order that the severity of God may return unto goodness, each one who has been chastised withdraw his foot from sins and return to the path of virtues and good conduct. Finally the Apostle teaches concerning those who have fallen that, if they do not remain in unbelief, they shall be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again, so that, just as abandoned shoots, so also men, grafted as it were into certain trunks of virtue, may be able to bear the fruits of good merits.
Nor did he less express the common doctrine when he subjoined to these words9 of the same hymn, “Those who persecute me have drawn near to iniquity”:
God, therefore, penetrates the soul and illumines it as though with the splendor of eternal light. But although by his power he is diffused through all, and in all, and above all, because he was born of the Virgin for all, both good and evil, just as he also commands his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, yet he cherishes him who draws near to himself. For just as he who closes the windows of his house and chooses a dark place in which to dwell excludes from himself the splendor of the sun, so he who turns himself away from the sun of justice cannot behold its brilliance, because he walks in darkness and, amid the light of all, is himself the cause
of his own blindness. Open, therefore, thy windows, so that thy whole house may shine with the radiance of the true sun. Open thine eyes, that thou mayest see the sun of justice rising for thee. The Word of God knocks at thy door: “If anyone opens to me,” he says10, “I will enter.” If anyone, therefore, does not open, is the fault that of him who does not enter, and not rather of him who does not open? … Indeed, he does not hold back those who flee, does not compel the unwilling, but neither does he spurn those who draw near. And indeed his power, his Word, God, is near to all …; but sins separate very many from him, concerning whom it is said11: “Behold, those who remove themselves far from thee shall perish” … For, supplying vital grace to all, he is present to all by the gift of his goodness; but he is nearer to those who are of a contrite heart.