But when he comes to examine those objections which he calls Vincentian1, and which he calls prodigious lies belonging to certain most absurd blasphemies2, after reporting3 the objection that God does not will to save all, even if all will to be saved, he immediately4 adds:
Since the Truth5 says, “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” how can it come about that God, who saves even those of whom it cannot be said that they will to be saved, should be unwilling to save some, even if they will to be saved—unless there are certain causes concerning which, although they are unknown to us, he nevertheless judges well, and concerning which it cannot be said that he ought to have done anything otherwise than he has done?
Therefore, this distinction being removed, which divine knowledge contains within the secret of its justice, it must most sincerely be believed and professed that God wills all men to be saved. For the Apostle, whose6 sentence this is, most earnestly commands what is most piously observed in all the churches: that supplication be made to God for all men. That many of them perish is the merit of those who perish; that many are saved is the gift of him who saves. For that the guilty man should be condemned is the blameless justice of God; but that the guilty man should be justified is the ineffable grace of God.
Wherefore, to the following7 objection, that God creates the greater part of the human race for this purpose, that he may destroy it eternally, he thus8 responds:
God indeed is the Creator of all men, but no one was created by him for this purpose, that he should perish; because the cause of being born is one thing, and the cause of perishing another. For that men should be born is the benefit of the Creator; but that they should perish is the merit of the transgressor. In Adam9, namely, in whom the nature of all men was preformed10,
all sinned and were bound by the same sentence which he received. Nor are they loosed from this bond, even if they lack sins of their own, unless through the Holy Spirit they are reborn in the sacrament of the death and resurrection of Christ.
He, therefore, is exceedingly impious and unlearned who does not distinguish the vice of nature from the Author of nature, from whom whatsoever is to be condemned in each man is altogether alien. For he creates men that they may be men; nor does he withdraw his workmanship from the multiplying successions of generations, since, according to the counsel of his good will, he is to repair11 in many what he himself made and to punish in many what he himself did not make. For just as12 through the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many are constituted just.
Footnotes
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Vossius, History of Pelagianism, book I, chap. IX; Noris, History of Pelagianism, book II, chap. XI; and Antelmius, in the critical dissertation On the Genuine Works of the Holy Fathers Leo the Great and Prosper of Aquitaine, think that the Vincent from whom the Vincentian objections received their name is Vincent of Lérins himself, the monk and author of the most celebrated Commonitorium. But Baronius saw long ago that this opinion was supported by no conjectures capable of producing belief; nor did the Maurist editor of the works of Prosper conceal this in the admonition prefixed to Saint Prosper of Aquitaine’s Responses on Behalf of Augustine’s Doctrine to the Chapters of the Vincentian Objections, pp. 130–131. ↩
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Preface to the Responses to the Chapters of the Vincentian Objections, p. 131. ↩
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Chapter II, p. 133. ↩
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Response to chapter II, p. 133. ↩
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Matt. VII. 11. ↩
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I Tim. II. 4. ↩
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Chapter III, p. 133. ↩
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Response to chapter III, p. 133. ↩
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Rom. V. 12. ↩
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Human nature was expressed in our first parents according to the image of God, as is expressly read in Gen. I. 27. If, therefore, all posterity was preformed in them, in them also, so far as pertains to God, it attained the dignity of the divine image. But what and how great the dignity of this image is, both the author of Wisdom and Paul explain excellently: the former, saying in chap. II. 23, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἔκτισε τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐπ᾽ ἀφθαρσίᾳ, καὶ εἰκόνα τῆς ἰδίας ἀϊδιότητος ἐποίησεν αὐτόν—that God created man incorruptible and made him the image of his own eternity; the latter, who in Eph. IV. 24 says that the first man was κατὰ θεὸν κτισθέντα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ὁσιότητι τῆς ἀληθείας—created according to God in justice and true holiness. Therefore, if thou regardest the first and innate counsel of God, the whole posterity of men obtained this: that it should be incorruptible, should bear the image of the divine perpetuity, and should shine forth with justice and true holiness. But can this thought enter the mind: that God did not of himself pursue with sincere love his own image, which he also rendered akin to himself by the bestowal of such great gifts? ↩
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Augustine distinguishes three things in the Enchiridion, chaps. XXVII–XXIX: the condemned mass, which is human progeny itself bound by the original stain; the reformed mass; and the repaired mass. The whole progeny of men ought to have been a condemned mass if God had chosen toward men the same order of justice as toward the transgressing angels, and if he had not decreed to manifest his unowed mercy much more evidently in the liberation rather of the unworthy. But he decreed this latter thing and reformed the whole mass, that is, exempted it from the necessity of perishing and bestowed upon it the faculty of obtaining salvation. Yet he repaired only that part concerning which he foresaw that it would rightly use the benefit of reformation. Wherefore this is the distinction between reformation and reparation: a) the former is universal, the latter particular; b) the former pertains to the will of God the Savior, while the latter is referred to the will of God the Judge. ↩
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Rom. V. 19. ↩