Therefore, according to the testimony of Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius, Arnobius, Lactantius, and Victorinus, no relation exists first between God and men other than that of benevolence, affection, and paternal love, by which it comes about that God is called and believed to be Father: the most indulgent, most gentle, supreme, and principal Father, from whom all paternity flows; and so much a father that no one is so much a father, no one so kind.
The origin and rationale of this benevolence and paternity toward men is innate in God, flows from his native goodness, and is so universal that it excepts no one and embraces all.
It is innate in God, since it is proper to the true God and to royal power to deny his benignity to no one and not to consider who deserves it or does not. It is universal, since God is the Parent of all, the ruler of all and the lover of his own, the common Father, and equally aids the good and the evil.
With both attributes there coheres a third ornament of the same benevolent and paternal will, by which it is efficacious, active—
—and pours itself forth in a manifold abundance of benefits. To this ornament pertain the things which the African Fathers unanimously attest: a) that precisely the same thing is signified when we say that God is good toward all and does good to all; b) that God of his own accord provides for men; c) that of his own accord he is so disposed that he cannot despise men; d) that no one suffers repulse from him and all are enriched by the effects of divine benignity; and finally e) that both the natural and the supernatural order are so divinely administered and directed that souls born for heavenly things may serve the supreme Father and Lord forever and be an eternal kingdom for God.
But what we have indicated, according to the judgment of the African Church, concerning the amplitude and efficacy of the paternal will of God is of such weight and such moment that it ought both to be set forth more diligently and confirmed more strongly. Tertullian, therefore, establishes as a principle that it pleased God, according to the goodness which is his, to bring aid to the fallen human race, extend a merciful hand to it, and advance it from the state of ruin and condemnation to the state of hope and reformation. And the following words are assuredly manifest1 and fitted to persuade what we teach:
After so many and such great offenses of human temerity, begun from Adam, the prince of the race; after man had been condemned2 with the dowry of the age, cast out of paradise, and subjected to death; when God had again hastened to his mercy3, from that point he initiated penance in himself4, rescinding the sentence of his former wrath—
—and covenanting to forgive man and his own image.
Therefore the human race dwells in a state of reformation, and God converts the wrath owed to it into the mercy with which he has pursued his image.
But from this divine purpose of reforming humanity the following can in no way be separated: a) a sincere will concerning the salvation of all men; b) a will by which God prefers the penance of men to their destruction and ruin; c) a will by which he gives to all the opportunity and power to rise from the native condition of children of wrath to the most blessed dignity of adopted sons; d) a will which denies no one the aids necessary for obtaining salvation; e) a will which does not decree punishment before men have conspired unto their own ruin and despised heavenly mercy; and therefore f) a will which has chosen that order of providence in which the first place is granted to goodness and mercy, but only the second to severity and punitive justice. It is sufficient to unfold the idea and notion of reformation into its elements, as it were, for all and each of these things to appear comprehended within them. Wherefore, if Tertullian held the opinion which we attributed to him and truly believed that the human race was divinely led from the state of wrath and condemnation to the state of mercy and salvation, there is hope that, as opportunity arose, he handed down all the things we have recalled. And indeed he did hand them down, with such evidence and such perspicuity of testimonies that scarcely anything fuller could be desired.
Footnotes
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On Penance, chap. II, pp. 139–140. ↩
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By “the dowry of the age,” according to the interpretation of Rigaltius, he means the offenses through which man fell away from divine grace. Ludovicus de la Cerda, in his notes on this passage, and Benedictus Ferdinandus, on Gen. III, sect. 40, report other interpretations of the same phrase. ↩
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For after God punished Adam by casting him out of paradise, he very quickly had recourse to his mercy. Rhenanus therefore skillfully explained Tertullian’s words by this commentary: “When God had quickly betaken himself to his mercy.” ↩
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As though, says Rigaltius, God repented of having made man; as though he also repented of having condemned him. But, writes de la Cerda, Tertullian’s opinion is altogether different, and entirely comes to this:
After punishing man, God, immediately taking refuge in his mercy, by that very fact initiated penance in himself, because, rescinding his former wrath, he covenanted that from supreme mercy he was prepared to forgive anyone who repents.
Therefore, to initiate penance in himself is nothing else here than to raise the banner of mercy in himself for the good of penitents, which could not exist before Adam sinned: God assuredly made himself an asylum for penitents. Wherefore, against Barraeus—because he refers the initiation of penance in God to those words, “It repents me that I made man”—the learned man notes that he is gravely mistaken. For Tertullian says the same thing that Athanasius says in the Questions to Antiochus the Prince, q. LXXXIII: ἐπὶ τῆς μετανοίας τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ὁ θεός ἐστιν ὁ ταύτης πρόξενος. That is, he says that God first opened places of hospitality for the repentance of sinners. And immediately he makes the devil the ποιητήν, author, of evil penance, since he brings it about that men grieve not over sins but over good works. Therefore, as the devil is the institutor of evil penance, so God is the institutor of good penance; and that penance is good by which one repents only of sins. ↩