But what grace does our author understand when he confirms that it is common and universal, and maintains that, though in various ways and in a diverse measure, it was nevertheless furnished to all men? External grace alone, or external grace indeed, but joined with interior grace that heals and elevates? Pasquier Quesnel treats this controversy at length while he weighs the opinion of Vossius1 and Noris2, who judged that the books On the Calling of All Nations must be denied to Prosper chiefly for this reason: that their doctrine did not agree exactly with the doctrine of Prosper.
For, having related the words of Noris3, “I see that the writer of those books departed from Prosper by a diverse way. For in book II he expends very much labor to make the grace of God common to all,” Quesnel adds4:
This accusation strikes Leo, not only because he was the author5 of the books On the Calling of6 Nations, but also because there are many things in his other undisputed works or sermons which agree with that doctrine of the books On the Calling, so that from that affinity of doctrine we have deservedly taken an argument7 for asserting these books for our Leo. We collected some passages of this kind above8; but before an equitable reader it is easy to clear both these and those from the accusations of Noris and others, and invincibly to prove two things. The first, indeed, is that our Leo, when he makes the grace of God common to all both in the books On the Calling of Nations and in his sermons,
employs the name grace in a far different sense and a broader signification than it is taken by Prosper. But the second is that, when the same name grace is employed by Leo in the same sense in which it is employed by Prosper, the same doctrine concerning grace is also preached by him together with Prosper as by Augustine himself9.
But that he may explain the first of these things more clearly, he immediately10 proceeds:
In these places, therefore, where he asserts that the grace of God has been given to all, by it he understands the outward and natural gifts of God, which are exposed indiscriminately to all; sometimes the documents of the Mosaic law; and sometimes also the preaching of the holy Gospel, which is denied to no condition of men.
He explains this threefold class of grace both in other places and in chapter IX of book II. “Let us return,” he says, “to that from which the disputation digressed: namely, to the consideration of the differences by which the operations and gifts of divine grace were varied. For the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are incomprehensible and whose ways are unsearchable, has always so tempered his mercy and justice that by the most secret will of his eternal counsel he did not will the measures of his gifts to be equal in all times, upon all generations, or upon all men. For he assisted in one manner those whom it was fitting to bring to knowledge of himself by the testimonies of heaven and earth; in another, those for whom he provided not only by the service of the elements, but also by the teaching of the law, the oracles of the prophets, the signs of miracles, and the cooperation of angels; and in another manner much more did he declare mercy to all men when the Son of God was made the Son of man, that he might be found by those who did not seek him and might appear to those who did not ask after him.”
Then, after interposing a few things, he infers:
It remains, therefore, that our author properly called only the first kind of grace common in all times to all
peoples and to all and each of men: I mean, the testimonies of heaven and earth, the services and ministry of the elements, and finally the beauty and adornment of the whole world. To assign the name of grace to these belongs to a writer contemplating the first state of man in integrity, not the present condition of fallen man; but to impart sufficiency for salvation to external grace of this kind belongs only to a man infected by the Pelagian plague.
Footnotes
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History of Pelagianism, book I, chap. XX. ↩
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History of Pelagianism, book II, chap. XIV. ↩
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Noris contends by dogmatic arguments and attempts by these to decide the critical question. But how unstable this is and how full of hazard and danger can be estimated from this one fact alone: that Joseph Tricassinus, versed to an astonishing degree in the doctrine of Augustine and Prosper, in the work which he entitled On the Grace Necessary for Salvation Given to All and Each, showed by many arguments that Prosper is eminent among the defenders of universal grace. ↩
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Dissertation II, on the author of the books On the Calling of Nations, § XXVIII. ↩
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This indeed was not proved by Quesnel with arguments, but asserted by certain conjectures, which the Ballerini brothers, in their observations on his dissertation II, § II, nos. IX–XXVI, show to be empty and fallacious, and in no way suited to settling the matter. ↩
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The genuine title of the work is On the Calling of All Nations, not On the Calling of Nations, as the Ballerini maintain by the authority of the codices in the prefixed admonition. St. Leo also wrote of the calling of all nations in Sermon XXXVI, chap. II. ↩
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Not very skillfully, since this doctrine is proper not to one or another, but common to all the Fathers of the Church. ↩
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The cited dissertation, § XX. ↩
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By these words Quesnel intimates two things not obscurely: I. that interior grace, according to Augustine and Prosper, is not universal but particular; and II. that it is of such a kind that it is never separated by a dissent of the free will from the good work for the sake of which it is conferred. How greatly both things depart from the truth is not unknown to learned theologians. ↩
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The cited dissertation, § XXVIII. ↩