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Library / Theological Commentaries, Part III: On the Division of the Divine Will into First and Second, and on the Universal Extent of the Restored Order

XLVII–LXI · The Author of On the Calling of All Nations

LVIII. The connection by which interior gifts are joined with exterior gifts is established

Moreover, these are the words of the same author when he treats of the outward benefit of universal preaching1:

When, therefore, the word of God is introduced into the ears of the flesh through the ministry of those who preach, the operation of divine power is mingled with the sound of the human voice; and he who incited the office of the evangelizer also strengthened2 the disposition of the hearer. The food of the word grows sweet to the soul; the old darkness is driven away by a new light; and the inward sight is stripped of the mist of ancient error. The mind passes from will to will; and if that will which is driven away lingers with some delay, nevertheless the will which is generated claims for itself all the choicer things, so that the law of sin and the law of God may have diverse and separate dwellings in the same man; and3, with the flesh lusting against the spirit, but the spirit resisting the lusts of the flesh, the tempter may indeed dare to lie in wait through outward things, but the mind fortified by the aid of God may prevail. For unto the great4 utility of the faithful the matter of conflicts has been reserved, so that holiness may not grow proud while weakness is assailed.

But, discoursing5 concerning those things which accompany the condition of the new creature, he says:

Therefore, the new creature has this as proper to itself through grace: that those who are the workmanship6 of God, who are fashioned in Christ by heavenly nativity,

may not grow torpid in idleness nor be dissolved by sloth, but may advance from virtue unto virtue by walking along the way of good works. For this is to be fashioned; this is to be made a new creature from the old; this is to be reformed from the image of the earthly man unto the image of the heavenly man. He whose husbandry, whose building, and whose workmanship we are begins, increases, and perfects this entire work, whether openly through cooperators of grace or secretly through the ministration of the Spirit.

Such, therefore, is the rationale of the order divinely instituted: that with the outward gift of evangelical preaching the operation of divine power is mingled; that with the sound introduced into the ears of the flesh there is joined a sweetness poured forth from heaven, by which the disposition is fashioned and the mind passes from will to will; and that with the outward cooperators of grace he should begin the work, he should increase it, and he should perfect it, who supplies the increase. But among the outward cooperators of grace, among the gifts of outward preaching, among the sounds introduced into the ears of the flesh for instruction, the author constantly7 enumerates, on the one hand, heaven and earth and every creature, which was disposed chiefly for this utility of the human race,

that rational nature might be instructed in the worship and love of its Author; and, on the other hand, the ineffable beauty of the whole world itself and the rich and ordered largess of its ineffable benefits, through which certain tablets of the eternal law were furnished to human hearts, so that the common and public doctrine of divine instruction might be read in the pages of the elements and the volumes of the seasons. Thus8 all men were convicted of having received prophetic voices and legal precepts in the services and testimonies of the elements.

If not, therefore, from the very natures of things, then certainly from the established order of providence, which is the order9 of reformation, it follows that the universal amplitude of outward gifts coheres with the universal amplitude of special grace; nor can the former be judged universal unless special grace also is deemed to have been bestowed upon all men.

From this order must also be derived that which the author writes10: that although salvation is far from sinners, nevertheless nothing is empty of the presence and power of salvation itself; and then that which he adds11: that by the testimony of outward gifts men could be assisted in seeking the true God. But12 whoever seeks God as is fitting ought not to doubt that he received from him whom he seeks the disposition of seeking. To what, therefore, does the statement pertain that by the testimony of outward gifts men could be assisted in seeking the true God? It pertains to this: that we understand that the inward and secret testimony is joined with the outward and public testimony.

Footnotes

  1. Book I, chap. VIII, col. 177. ↩

  2. This is the preferable reading to the following two: forms, formed. ↩

  3. Gal. V. 17. ↩

  4. These words, which the Fathers of Trent imitated, are reported by Pope Gelasius in the opuscule against the Pelagians, and indeed with this encomium: “As a certain doctor of the Church wisely taught, saying: ‘For unto the great utility of the faithful,’” and what follows. ↩

  5. Book I, chap. XXIII, col. 201. ↩

  6. But in what manner men become the workmanship of God the author inquires in book I, chap. VII, saying: “Here it seems necessary to treat whether, when a man begins to be of good will, that same will which was in him is corrected, or whether another will, which he did not have and which opposes the former, is implanted in him. That this may appear more evidently, let it not be irksome to inquire into it more deeply.” He pursues this inquiry by describing the original stain and its propagation into universal posterity, by which it came about that man was deprived not of the will, but of the health of the will. “For the nature was good, but was made evil in quality; and that movement of the mind which can never be without some love—that is, without some will—did not lose appetite but changed affection, receiving in desire that which it ought to have rejected in judgment. Therefore, when man returns to piety—of whom it was said, ‘a spirit going and not returning,’ because unless God converted him he would not return—when he becomes a new workmanship and a new creature, another substance is not created in him, but that same substance which had been impaired is repaired; nor is anything taken away from him except the vice which nature did not have.” These things are assuredly much more suitable than those which an Italian writer published in print in these most recent years. ↩

  7. For thou wilt scarcely read one or another chapter in which thou dost not find this inculcated. ↩

  8. Book II, chap. V. ↩

  9. Augustine discourses excellently concerning this order, which is that of universal reformation, in the Enchiridion, chaps. XXVIII–XXIX, and from him Bernard Desirant in book I on the first proposition of Quesnel. ↩

  10. Book II, chap. IV. ↩

  11. Ibid., chap. XXV. But in chapter XVII, speaking of those nations upon whom the grace of the Savior proposed in the Gospel had not yet shone, he writes: “Nevertheless, that measure of general assistance which from above has always been furnished to all men is not denied to them; although human nature has been wounded by so bitter a wound that spontaneous contemplation is not fully able to instruct anyone in the knowledge of God unless the true light has dispelled the overshadowing of the heart, which, by an inscrutable judgment, the just and good God poured forth in past ages not in the same manner as in the last days.” ↩

  12. Ibid., book I, chap. VIII. ↩

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Carlo Passaglia, “LVIII. The connection by which interior gifts are joined with exterior gifts is established,” in Theological Commentaries, Part III: On the Division of the Divine Will into First and Second, and on the Universal Extent of the Restored Order, English translation, Mind of the Church, https://mindofthechurch.com/works/passaglia-commentaries-3/061-lviii-the-connection-by-which-interior-gifts-are-joined/.

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