Since now that end—blessedness in the contemplation of the essence of God—lies far beyond the limits of what is attainable by man in virtue of his actual destiny and powers, Thomas asserts the necessity of grace for men from the very nature of the case, and quite irrespective of the fact of sin. Reason is sufficient only for knowledge of such intelligible beings as man comes to know by sense-perception. The human reason can rise higher only when supplemented by the light of grace, as by something which is superadded to the being of man (Qu. 109, art. 1). So that even before the fall man was by himself capable only of attaining the good proportionate to his proper nature, which is the good of virtus acquisita; but for that higher good, which is the good of virtus infusa, whereof the ground is love,¹ he required grace over and above as the donum superadditum. Much more is this needful to sinful humanity, which looks to the grace of God, first for healing and thereafter for that movement towards supernatural virtue, which is meritorious (art. 2). So that, unsupported by gratia gratuita, man can neither merit everlasting life, nor yet forsake sin, nor yet of his own strength prepare himself to receive grace (arts. 5, 6, 7). Now grace, in the first instance, is that special love of God whereby He draws man out beyond the restrictions of his natural being into participation of the divine good; it is that permanent eternal act of predestination which is not determined by any consideration of merit. But the result which is wrought in men by this act, that supernatural gift which is infused into the soul and becomes in it a habit or quality, is also called grace. For, as God’s working upon His creatures in general is not atomistic—as, on the contrary, their movements are brought about by God by means of fixed forms and definite properties, so also, with a view to the attainment of the good that is above nature, He bestows upon men certain forms and properties, in accordance with which they are gently and promptly (suaviter et prompte) impelled towards that end. In this sense is the gift of grace a quality of man (Qu. 110, arts. 1, 2). Another distinction is that between gratia operans et cooperans, and this applies to both sides of the distinction which has just been drawn. In so far as grace is represented as an act of God’s love, or as that which moves the will towards the end proposed; and also in so far as grace is understood to mean a human habit as the power which heals and justifies, grace is in either case operans. But in so far as the soul stirred by God’s act of grace is represented in a particular action as at the same time bestirring itself, and also in so far as the habit of grace is stated to be the ground of a meritorious work proceeding from the free will, grace is in either case co-operans. For in the domain of will we must distinguish between the inward and the outward act. In the inward act the will maintains a passive attitude, inasmuch as it is moved by God, especially when the will that had formerly been evil begins to will the good; but in the outward act the free will dominates the means of its accomplishment, and although it is God who in this case also upholds the power of the will, and prepares the external conditions of its exertion, yet, nevertheless, His grace therein is only cooperans (Qu. 111, art. 2). The glimpse given in this distinction of a measure of co-ordination between the human will and the grace of God is certainly kept in sight only in a limited degree. Thomas has it in view to establish on as wide a basis as possible the supremacy of the thought of gratia operans. In accordance with his fundamental position, that no form can become active in a material that has not been previously prepared to receive it, it might appear as if it were necessary that man should dispose himself to receive gratia habitualis. But the act of free will whereby the gift of grace is appropriated, that is, faith whereby we turn to God, can itself be traced back only to an impulse from God (Qu. 112, art. 2; Qu. 113, art. 4).

That habitual grace which is implanted in men by God’s gracious act is justification, as being the proper regulation of our spiritual powers in subjection to the divine reason, that is, love. In him who formerly had been a sinner, this process takes place through the forgiveness of sins. But inasmuch as a movement can be better denoted by reference to the terminus ad quem than by reference to the terminus a quo, this change in the sinner is better called justificatio than remissio peccatorum. For remission of sins never takes place without grace being at the same time infused; so that, in conjunction with the ideal change in man’s position as before God, there is simultaneously wrought a real change in his personal characteristics (Qu. 113, art. 1). This connexion of gratia habitualis with the forgiveness of sins is shown by Thomas in the succeeding article to result necessarily from the relations of God’s love to men. The forgiveness of sins is God’s pacification with us; this last means the Divine love towards us. But (Qu. 110, art. 1) gratia habitualis was recognised to be the effect in us of God’s love. Ideo non posset intelligi remissio culpæ si non adesset infusio gratiæ (Qu. 113, art 2). From our point of view we must fully recognise that in the concrete instance before us no forgiveness of sins can be thought of apart from regeneration. But then, from the way in which Thomas had begun his elucidation of the idea of justification there should have been given in the first article under this question a proof of the proposition that transmutatio a statu injustitiæ results per remissionem peccatorum. But this connexion of ideas² is not brought out when it is only shown that the two must appear together where the love of God asserts itself. Instead, however, of remedying the defectiveness of this scientific procedure, the development of ideas which follows is rather a divergence from the problem itself as it had been originally apprehended. In the first place, for example, the circumstances of justification are described without the forgiveness of sins being taken into account at all as the specific instrumentality; the sinner’s being made righteous, results because God moves man to righteousness. Now God moves all things in a manner suited to their special nature; and man is endowed with free will. God accordingly infuses the gift of justifying grace in such a way as at the same time to set the free will in motion towards the receiving of this gift (art. 3). And while man is made righteous by that motion of his free will that was elicited by God, he abandons sin with loathing, and through desire draws near to righteousness (art. 5). In justification, therefore, four points are involved—the infusion of grace; the movement of the free will towards God through the awakening of faith; the movement of the free will against sin; the remission of guilt as completion of justification (art. 6, 8). So that the component momenta of the idea take at the end of the discussion an order just the reverse of that in which they were presented at its beginning. But besides, the position due to the idea of grace is shown in the subsequent doctrine of merit by the plain declaration of Thomas: si gratia consideratur secundum rationem gratuiti doni, omne meritum repugnat gratiæ (Qu. 114, art. 5). If, notwithstanding this the doctrine of merit (p. 57) proceeds on the assumption that by virtue of God’s appointment the acts of free will and of love proceeding from the gratia habitualis bestowed by God are in justice repaid with a reward (art. 1), and that accordingly the justified person can merit to have his love increased, and finally can merit life everlasting (art. 8): all this is possible only because the whole of the life of man in the state of grace which, properly speaking, can be thought of rightly only under the idea of gratia operans, is conceived under the laxer notion of gratia cooperans. But in this there is implied a characteristic shifting of the relative position of the idea of grace. As the unconditioned principle of justification, as the power which stirs up the free will to strive after the supreme good, it is (in the synthesis we have mentioned) the form, while the will is the matter. But as a habit and quality in men, as love infused, grace is represented as the matter, as this very phrase “infused” indicates; while the will, which is set in motion by means of justification, and yet at the same time, by its very nature, moves itself, is represented as the form. It is impossible to avoid looking at the matter alternately from the one side and from the other, from the religious point of view, and from the empirico-ethical; but everything depends on the amount of prominence we give to the latter as distinguished from the former, and on the question whether the necessary dependence of the latter on the former is secured by clearly defined conceptions.

Thomas has not taken any care about this. After he had made preparation for the particular doctrine of grace, by completely putting the will in a position of dependence on divine influence, we might have expected him to specify what are the distinguishing marks of the movement of the will that is brought about through grace. The general subjection of the human will to God had been recognised as twofold—He is the operating cause and also the final cause, the universal good (p. 76). The relation of grace to the will is not however so expressed by Thomas as would suit the latter higher point of view; it is merely indicated to be the operating cause. But under this idea the freedom of the will does not get full justice. If it is to be maintained we must, by means of the distinction between gratia cooperans and operans, tone down into a conditio sine qua non that which was at first stated to be the sole operating cause; but in doing so we have no theoretical principle to guide us in accentuating these two thoughts alternately. When accordingly practical motives came into play for laying the emphasis on the point of view of gratia cooperans and of human merit, those Augustinian premisses (to which on the whole the mediæval theology remained faithful) were not strong enough effectually to counteract the conclusions developed in an opposite direction, which Augustine himself had already formulated.³ The second objection that must be raised against the doctrine of Thomas is that he has treated the doctrine of justification out of all connexion with the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction and merit, and on that account has failed to make use of the means for the correction of his idea of justification which are offered by his own apprehension of these notions. Superficially considered this defect is occasioned by the circumstance that Thomas, even in the professedly systematic arrangement of the Summa Theologica,did not abandon the plan of Lombard’s “ Sentences,” and on that account took up the doctrine of justification before that of Christ’s work. But what is the use of the latter doctrine if the thought of the justification and bestowal of grace upon the individual is introduced and disposed of without any attention whatever being paid to the facts that Christ is the procurer of grace, above all of the grace of forgiveness of sins, and indeed in such a sort that, as Head of the Church, He has rendered satisfaction for it, and earned merit? These are considerations by reference to which the bald notion of grace, as a mere operating cause, would necessarily have been qualified and completed; by due attention to which the commanding importance of the forgiveness of sins before the imparting of actual righteousness would have been maintained. And finally, something else would probably have been made of the position held by the Church of the redeemed constituted by the work of Christ, in reference to the bestowal of grace on the individual, than the doctrine that the sacraments as administered by the clergy are the instrumental causes of grace (Pars. iii. qu. 62, art. 1), and are so, as being the means which are best adapted to man’s sensuous constitution (Qu. 61, art. 1).

15. Duns Scotus explains the ideas of justification and of the merit consequent thereupon for the purpose of controverting the idea, which seemed to be expressed by the Lombard in his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, that he is in men the immediate cause of the meritorious action of the will.⁴ In opposition to this he maintains the common mediæval opinion (which he then makes out to be the Lombard’s meaning also) that the love which in man is the source of meritorious actions is a habit inwrought by God. While by the assumption of this gratia habitualis or justitia infusa he combats the validity of the first interpretation of the Lombard, he vindicates that assumption and defines the ideas of it as follows (In Sent. Quæstiones, L. i. dist. 17, qu. 3): Since unrighteousness is essentially a negation, it can be done away with only by means of the opposite habit. Thus he who from being an unrighteous person has been made into a righteous person, takes on the habit that is opposite to that negation. Moreover, God admits to everlasting life not the sinner, but the righteous person. To admit one to everlasting life, means that God finds one to be worthy of that reward by reason of his present disposition whom formerly He did not find to be worthy of it. Now this change cannot have its origin in the will of God, for that is unchangeable: it can arise therefore only from a change on the part of man. We must accordingly trace it to God’s eternal fore-ordination (which had been already postulated by Duns, as the effectual ground of the validity of a merit) that justification takes place as something essentially new, as a real change in man; and that too not in the subjective forms of faith and hope (for these continue to be exercised even where justification has been lost), but as love towards God and towards one’s neighbour. Secondly, a refutation of the Lombard’s doctrine follows from the idea of merit. As meritorious acting is a thing of the will, it follows that the essence of merit consists in the thing in virtue of which one acts meritoriously. But this cannot be mere human nature, for in saying so one would fall into the error of Pelagius; something supernatural therefore is required, that is love, and not faith or hope, which continue to exist even in the sinner. This habit now, according to the already mentioned view of Duns (p. 61), lies at the foundation of all merit, as the ground on which God in His reasonableness accepts the appropriate action proceeding from it, and allows it to be considered as worthy to be rewarded with eternal life. It is as a habit, that is to say, that grace inclines the will to particular actions.

Although, accordingly, Duns does not bring the synthesis of grace and human will under the category of gratia operans (on the elucidation of which idea he does not enter at its appropriate place in the Sentences: Lib. ii. dist. 26), still he is unable to avoid the thought of it when he recognises gratia habitualis as being the forma operationis meritoriæ. But this mode of viewing the matter emerges only in a casual way. What he is really driving at is rather to make us see that in the joint operation of actus and habitus, the former idea is the superior one. For this purpose it is that he propounds, previous to the above-mentioned determination in the third question regarding justification and merit, the second question, which is, utrum habitus sit principium activum circa actum, while the third question is specially directed to this, an habitus moralis, in quantum virtus, sit principium activum respectu bonitatis in actu. He decides negatively on both points. As against Henry of Ghent,, who answers the first question affirmatively, he remarks that if the will operates through habit, it has no higher dignity than the wood which warms by means of the heat that accidentally inheres in it; but thus the idea of will would be altogether nullified. Moreover, habit would operate on the will as a natural force, and so the action of the will would not be free. And if love were once implanted in men, it would (on that supposition) be no longer possible for men to sin—an inadmissible assumption. Nor is it more allowable to consider will and habit as both partial causes of the action, as Thomas does. For they are not similar in kind, one must needs, therefore, be superior to the other. Now, habit seems to be the highest cause, inasmuch as it determines and inclines the power of the will to act. But then the will makes use of the habit, and not vice versâ; for the habit would be power, if it were the highest cause. Against this, therefore, Duns affirms that the position of supremacy belongs to the power of will, for it does not absolutely need habit in order to act: without habit the will merely operates less perfectly than with it. The four distinctive marks of habit, which are that by means of it one acts easily, pleasantly, surely, and quickly—are explained simply by the inclination which habit imparts to the will as capacity for action. He compares moral habit especially to gravity, which as an attribute of the body is not the sufficient reason of its motion, although by it is expressed the tendency of the body in a downward direction. As accordingly the motive power must come from some other quarter, it further follows that goodness, as a habit, makes the action good only if there be conjoined with it the habit of wisdom, or the act of just moral judgment. But in that case also all depends upon the act; for wisdom, as a habit, imparts to the act its rightness only in virtue of a special act of wisdom.

Starting from these principles, Duns decides that, as regards the relation of gratia habitualis to the will as the potentia operans, the former is not (as he had previously admitted) the first cause of a merit; because it is the power that makes use of the habit, and not vice versâ; and also because grace would operate as a physical force, and the will would not be free. And although the idea of merit compels him to tag on to this declaration a sort of qualifying counterpoise, he is yet skilful enough to protect his practical interests in the freedom of the will against that limitation. Merit, he says, of course, has not its root in any natural quality of man, for it first comes to be anything at all only through God’s acceptance; it is thus grounded entirely in the association of reward with a human act by the will of God. “ It is true that merit is attainable by me upon the general conditions that I have the use of free will, and that I possess grace. But complete realization of the idea of merit is not in my power, except by Divine institution. The principal thing in merit thus proceeds from God, though this is not equivalent to saying that it is God Himself who merits. For merit is an act of the free power of volition, elicited by gracious inclination, well-pleasing to God, so as to be worthy of the reward of blessedness; but such an act is not possible for God. Thus the principal thing in merit proceeds from God, if by the principal thing is meant its final complement. But if the principal thing means the first or more perfect actuality, then the assertion that it proceeds from God must be negatived, for the act is an absolute thing, and by its very nature takes precedence of the passive acceptation, and is something more real than it.⁵

As regards Duns’ idea of justification, the following divergence from Thomas is also worthy of notice. Whilst the latter regards the forgiveness of sins primarily as the means of justification, but afterwards as a consequence of it, Duns treats it as an indifferent circumstance preceding the effectual bestowal of grace (i. 17, 3, sect. 19.) Further on (iv. dist. 16, qu. 2, sect. 6, 7) he explains as follows: “ The taking away of guilt and the bestowal of grace do not constitute one real change, for the former is not a real change at all. They would, it is true, possess that oneness, were actual sin an essential corruption of nature, or the negation of anything properly positive in man. In that case the removal of guilt would be equivalent to the restoration of that reality which had been taken away by guilt. But sin does not take away any existent good thing, it only does away with what ought to have existed: thus also the liability to punishment on account of guilt is nothing actual in the soul after the act has been committed, but is only an ideal relation (relatio rationis) in the object as it is willed (as it ought to be). Hence also deliverance from that liability is no actual change. For confirmation of this line of thought, use is made of Duns’ declaration (arising out of his idea of the originally unlimited power of God), that God in virtue of that power could have forgiven sins without bestowing habitual grace (i. 17, 3, sect. 29; iv. 1, 6, sect. 7, 9). But thereby nothing positive would be acquired. For he who through pardon of an injury is no longer an enemy, still is not on that account a friend, but only indifferent. And he who through forgiveness of sins is reconciled with God, still is not in virtue of that acceptable to Him, as being in a special state of grace, as was the case with man in the original state of nature. This consideration, however, serves the purpose only of bringing out clearly the difference between the merely negative and ideal abolition of guilt, and the positive real change on man in the state of grace. According to that regulated power of God which follows laws that have been fixed by His wisdom and His will, and which may be ascertained from Holy Scripture and the utterances of the saints, God cannot free any one from guilt on whom He does not bestow effectual grace.

Although this doctrine is not placed in any immediate connexion with that of Christ’s merit, it is nevertheless unmistakably in strict harmony with it. For while the idea of satisfaction proceeds upon the negative conception of forgiveness of sins as the chief thing, the thought of Christ’s merit, on the other hand (which alone is maintained by Duns), requires that a positive value be assigned to it in the complementary idea of reward. Now, inasmuch as from the circumstances of the case the reward earned by Christ is transferred to the elect, on behalf of whom Christ acquired merit, it is the inevitable consequence of Duns’ view that we should think of the bestowal of grace on individuals as being a real positive qualification for eternal life, and, in particular, for the merits that lead thereto (p. 82). The forgiveness of sins, at the same time, has a place in this view as a subordinate preliminary, since those on whom the merit of Christ comes to be positively effectual had previously to be freed from the debt due to God. As in all the instances that have hitherto been noticed, so here also on this point of doctrine Duns stands in opposition to Thomas, and at the same time excels him in the strict logical accuracy of his thinking. For it was certainly involved in Thomas’s doctrine of satisfaction and merit that, as he himself says, real justification was to be accounted for by the forgiveness of sins as the means (p. 78); but he has not told us how, and consequently the forgiveness of sins is placed in a subordinate position behind justification. I would also point out, at the same time, that the Catholic interests involved in a realistic conception of justification are theoretically much more securely placed by Duns than by Thomas; for the distinction which the latter draws between satisfaction and merit, in such a way as to make the former idea the superior one, is calculated on the assumption that, on their application to individuals, absolution from sin dominates the real change to a state of grace wrought in individuals, or their actual qualification for eternal life.

In the consideration of human merit, for which the justified person appears to be qualified by the general appointment of God and the bestowal of gratia habitualis, but yet by means of which he is in a position also to increase his state of grace, Duns shows a higher measure of practical interest in the spontaneity of man than does Thomas. Theoretically, he was unable to escape the admission that it is the supernatural habit of love that is the ground of merit (p. 83). But as he does not avail himself of the conception of gratia operans (which, as one of Thomas’s premisses, properly speaking, excludes any idea of merit), the principal stress, so far as Duns is concerned, lies theoretically upon the consideration of grace as the matter, and free will as the form of merit. And what is the praxis in view when the consciousness of the person who is seeking to achieve merit is regulated by belief that the will that acts is always something unconditioned and something more real than the acceptation, which also, as the corresponding act on God’s part, recognises only the preponderance of the will over the habit? In this dictum of Duns is asserted that claim to righteousness through works, against the prevalence of which in the religious life the Reformers declared war, and that, too, simply on behalf of those views of Divine grace which had been laid down by the mediæval theologians themselves.

The impulse given by Duns Scotus took effect on the theoretical views of that school of Nominalists that is dependent upon him. The following sentences contain a résumé of what William of Occam began in the fourteenth century, and Gabriel Biel⁶ after him, set forth in full logical consecutiveness:—Since the idea of merit essentially rests upon the free and optional acceptation of a good work by God, it appears that so far as God’s absolute omnipotence is concerned, no supernatural habit of love, no gift of grace, no forma inhærens would be indispensable for the acquirement of merit. In virtue of the law laid down by God, however, no one can be acceptable to Him, so as to have eternal life conferred upon him, unless he possess infused love. It certainly cannot be made to appear by natural reason that there is any such thing as an infused habit, but the fact stands established by Holy Writ. But, even upon this condition, the bestowal of eternal life upon the recipient of grace is a free and contingent act of God, which might be left undone without any injustice; yea, rather, as He infuses grace in free goodness, He bestows blessedness under this condition purely out of His pity (Lib. i. dist. 17, qu. 1). This line of thought is modified, however, after Duns’ fashion, in the second question. Nothing is meritorious which is not in the entire control of our will. But free will does not spring from habit; firstly, because habit is a natural cause; therefore the essence of merit, so far as we are concerned, consists principaliter in will; secondly, because no habit in itself is worthy of praise (for neither also is it in itself blameworthy)—not the acquired habit, much less the infused habit, which, still less than the other, lies under the control of the will. The ground of this view of the free will is that God has full power to accept, as meritorious unto everlasting life, a voluntary act of love to Him, even though a habit be not presupposed. For here also the dictum holds good, quod sine gratia nullus actus potest esse meritorius; not, of course, in the sense of grace as a habit in the creature, but in the sense of uncreated grace, the active mercy of God, which alone is the essential basis of merit. The two lines of thought pursued in the first and second questions respectively are placed (outwardly) in equipoise by the dictum (Qu. 3, dub. 2, responsio), that in a meritorious work two things have to be considered, substantia actus et ratio meriti. Quantum ad substantiam meritum est principaliter a voluntate libere producente, quantum ad rationem meriti est principaliter a caritate (infusa) ex divina ordinatione. Principalissime tamen est vere a Deo libere acceptante. In order to the acquirement of merit, therefore, the complete fulfilment of the law is by no means necessary; all that is required is merely that any one command or counsel whatever be carried out, and that no law be transgressed (Qu. 2). Good works, which are brought forth by means of free will and the state of grace, are merita de condigno—they merit the reward of eternal life, in accordance with the justice of God, wherein He fulfils His promise of that reward. This sort of obligation is in no way inconsistent with the entire freedom of God; for, His will being the first rule of all righteousness, He wills and performs everything righteously, and yet not as being bound to any one. Moreover, it is possible by the act of the free will, aided by grace, to merit de condigno the increase of the latter. Quia habens gratiam habet unde potest proficere in merito praemii beatifici, ergo etiam habet, unde potest proficere in gratia. Prima gratia, on the other hand—the bestowal of grace—one can merit only de congruo, in so far as God, out of His liberality, accepts, unto the bestowal of initial grace, a good act of the man who does what lies in his power (Lib. ii. dist. 27). For (as is developed in the following distinction—the 28th) free will has the power to produce of its own nature works morally good, to avoid mortal sins, and to fulfil the commandments of God—not, indeed, according to the intention of the Lawgiver (directed as it is to the achievement of our salvation), but yet so far as the essence of the action is concerned.

From these representations Biel (Lib. iii. dist. 19, concl. 5) draws the appropriate conclusion. Although principaliter Christ’s passion merited salvation for all Adam’s posterity, the activity of the subjects of salvation was nevertheless co-operative either as meritum de congruo or de condigno. For in order that any one, through the merits of Christ’s passion, may have his sins forgiven and grace infused into him—whether the grace which virtually makes righteous, or the grace which follows upon the first and increases it—there is requisite, in the case of adults, a good disposition of the will, and a good motion towards God, either incipient or complete repentance for the sins of past life, or love towards God and longing after salvation, or voluntary receiving of the sacraments—all which are merita de congruo—or for the increase of grace, there is requisite a good activity proceeding from previous grace; and this is meritum de condigno. But in the case of children and of those who are not in the use of reason, it is not possible to be cleansed from original sin without the sacrament; there is necessary, therefore, the co-operation of those who present the child and administer the sacrament, and their action is meritum de congruo. Hence it follows that, even although Christ’s passion is the chief merit in virtue of which grace and blessedness are bestowed, it is yet never the only and the complete meritorious cause. For there is always operative in conjunction with the merit of Christ, either as meritum de congruo or de condigno, some activity on the part of him who is the recipient of grace and blessedness, as merit of his own if he be an adult, as merit of other persons if he is not yet in the exercise of reason.

This view, which in point of clearness leaves nothing to be wished for, separates itself in form from the mode of treatment employed by the earlier theologians, in that it brings the doctrine of justification into direct connexion with that of the merit of Christ. But this circumstance gave rise to a divergence from preceding theologians, rendering it not possible to assert the merit of Christ as the sole and sufficient cause of salvation, but only as the chief one which had to be supplemented with merita de condigno, even if they, in virtue of their origin in the gift of grace, are subordinate to Christ’s merit. Here the dilemma which the Realists were unwilling to look in the face must be resolved. Either grace is to be taken strictly as the cause of Christ’s work and of the justification of the individual, in which case the idea of merita de condigno has no place and no meaning; or else we are to admit the idea of merita de condigno, and in that case the bestowal of blessedness is not to be attributed exclusively to grace and the merit of Christ, but to that and to the merits of believers. Biel, in deciding for the latter alternative, only affirmed plainly what Thomas in making the opposite assertion did not really wish to exclude. But, over and above this, the Nominalists exceed deliberate tendency of the Realists, by their assertions that merita de congruo have their value towards the acquisition of gratia prima. It was not Thomas alone who had found it to be inconceivable (the distance between human nature and God being too great) that from the mere power of the will without the aid of grace, merits fit to be regarded by God’s reasonableness should proceed (p. 58): Duns also regards it as improbable that God in His absolute omnipotence should accept works performed in puris naturalibus as merita de congruo; for such an opinion would be an approach to the error of Pelagianism (Lib. i. dist. 17, qu. 3, sect. 29). The Nominalists overcame this timidity. Of course, therefore, their doctrine on this subject is removed as far as possible from being the common doctrine of the mediæval Church; it is merely the tenet of a particular school of theology. Yet, since after a little fruitless opposition that school was not prevented by the Church from propagating its view, the Catholic Church of the middle ages has a share in the responsibility for this theory, and for the practical consequences involved in it, and even bears it as a distinctive feature that this view could have had currency within it for so long a period.

16. We shall on the other hand search in vain to find in any theologian of the middle ages the Reformation idea of justification—the deliberate distinction between justification and regeneration. Instances indeed occur in which, by the word justification is specially meant the Divine sentence of absolution from sins—particularly when certain unambiguous expressions of the apostle Paul are laid hold of;⁷ but we must not lay stress upon these instances so as to fancy in them an anticipation of the conscious thought of the Reformers. Their deliberate treatment of the idea of justification proceeds rather on the principle that a real change in the sinner is thought of as involved in it;⁸ in other words, the Reformation distinction between the two ideas is at the outset rejected, and the explanation of justification in the forensic sense is seen to be only a preliminary statement that requires to be corrected and filled out. But this implies an essential difference of meaning in those formulæ in which mediæval theologians seem to utter the watchword of the Reformers, and the work of collecting such utterances with a view to the defence of the doctrine of the Reformation,—such an attempt, for example, as may be seen in John Gerhard’s Confessio Catholica—exposes him who undertakes it to a strong suspicion of having suffered himself to be misled by careless observation. It was understood in the middle ages that faith alone pertains to justification; that justification is bestowed freely by grace; that it does not depend on merita de congruo as conditions: it is only the Nominalistic theory that forsakes these positions; nevertheless, from a theological point of view, what is meant by them is something entirely different from what is meant by the formulæ of the Reformers that sound so like them. In the time of the Reformation itself men had occasion to learn that contradictory senses could be attached by the conflicting parties to words that had the same sound.

Notwithstanding this, the leading thought of the Reformers regarding the conditions of justification rests upon a broad basis in the Church. Marked anticipations of it are to be met with in trains of thought expressed and indeed deliberately emphasised by certain men of the middle ages, and even by men who deliberately and unambiguously professed their adherence to the Catholic doctrine of justification.⁹ For in the thought of justification, so far as the Reformers are concerned, what is aimed at primarily and chiefly is by no means an objective doctrine of systematic theology, but simply a supreme standard whereby the subject who is a member of the Christian Church, and who, as such, is active in good works by the influence of the Holy Spirit, may judge for himself of his true religious condition. And what in fact the Reformers wish to establish is that the regenerate person does not owe his position before God and his assurance of salvation to the good works which he really does perform, but to the grace of God, which to his believing confidence pledges his justification through Christ. This assertion, which will be proved in the following chapter, I am compelled to make here by anticipation, in order to test by this criterion these expressions of mediæval piety which are justly regarded as offering analogies to the religious standpoint of the Reformers and which in the same proportion overpass the limits of the Catholic doctrine of justification and of the doctrine of merit mixed up with it.

It is certain that theologians, from Augustine onwards, always assume only the causal connexion between grace as justification on the one hand, and merit on the other. Nowhere do we find it stated that justification must be just what it is according to their doctrine, in order that merit may be possible. I cannot, however, fully account for the practical interest in that dogma displayed by those of the Roman Catholic confession, except on the understanding that the causal relation which in their doctrine is affirmed to subsist between justification and merit is at the same time a relation of purpose. For it is only the impression (even though it be an unconscious one) of relations of purpose that dominates the feelings as an immediate motive of practical conduct. When, accordingly, in that positive religious interest which invariably controls all negations of opposing theologoumena, justification is asserted in the Catholic sense, it is in the full belief that merits avail with God. The sinner must not only be really changed into a good man; he must also act by the freedom of his own will if he would attain to merit. With respect to both these points the Catholic conception of justification is fitted to be the appropriate premiss for the consciousness of merit, and especially inasmuch as, according to it, it is possible for the justified person to merit an increase of grace; while the Reformation distinction between justification and regeneration, and the placing of the former over the latter, renders entirely inadmissible the idea of merit. But then the idea even in the Catholic system itself holds an ambiguous position. For the thought of grace, whereby merit first becomes possible, excludes, when taken in a strict sense, the meritorious value of all works proceeding from grace, for it directly denies the independence of the regenerate man in his relation to God. Si gratia consideratur secundum rationem gratui doni, omne meritum repugnat gratiæ, says Thomas. Now this view of the entirely derivative character of all the moral and Christian worth of our person and our works is the properly religious one. It is inevitable therefore, that as soon as a man living within the sphere of Catholic Christianity gains such a stage of development as to try himself by the purely religious standard, the idea of merit so laboriously wrought out in the theory is without further consideration at once set aside. The countless expressions that have been uttered by Augustine with this tendency have naturally been no less operative in the Western Church than has been the connexion assumed by him in theory, to exist between grace and merit.

Wherever, then, in the middle ages, devotion, so far as it has found articulate expression, rises to the level of the thought, that the value of the Christian life, even where it is fruitful of good works, is grounded not upon these as human merits, but upon the mercy of God, inasmuch as by it are these good works first rendered possible, while also by it must the guilt of remaining sin be taken away; wherever this immediate assurance of the grace of God in the domain of the Christian Church is realized as the title of believers, which rises above all conceivable or actually existing means of grace—then the same line of thought is entered on as that in which the religious consciousness common to Luther and Zwingli was able effectually to break through the connexion which up to their time had subsisted between the Catholic doctrine and the Church institutions for the application of salvation. That this estimate of self by the religious standard, which denies merit and affirms grace exclusively, had throughout the centuries of the middle ages, a continuous and constant existence in the public consciousness cannot certainly be proved by documentary evidence. Only, just as surely as the Catholic Church of the middle ages was strictly and properly attached to Augustine’s school, there must have continued to exist within her along with the theory that turns upon grace and merit, a marked tendency also to the devotional feeling which relies exclusively upon God’s grace. We must not, however, expect to find that this tendency always realized itself fully, for we shall see that there were causes at work which were able in some instances to keep piety down below the level of the position just described, and in other instances to exaggerate it far beyond that limit. And, after all, the appreciation of themselves arrived at, even when grace was exclusively kept in view by those men of the middle ages, in whom such an appreciation can be traced at all, is as far as possible removed from being of a Reformation character. It had not with them the result of shaking a single part of the officially recognised doctrinal system or Church constitution; it neither leads them to suspect the doctrine of justification, nor does it enable them to dispense with the sacrament of penance, or with obedience to the Pope. But that this religious estimate of self, which practically denies to merit that value which is theoretically affirmed, should appear in a very pronounced form among the heroes of the mediæval church, serves to show that the same way of thinking when adapted by the Reformers was a product of the Church; and that the Reformation use of that line of thought, to bring about a complete change in the doctrine and ordinances of the Western Church, is simply a logical result of the idea of grace which came to be practically operative on all hands when the time came and the proper men were raised up.

17. The first both in time and importance to be considered in this connexion is St. Bernard of Clairvaux. He is in theory, as is shown by a passage cited above (p. 91), a Catholic of a thoroughly correct type; but not only do we very frequently find in his sermons expressions of the sense of absolute dependence on God that go far beyond the limits of Catholic dogma; but even in his treatise De gratia et libero arbitrio he addresses himself to the task of neutralizing the conventionally received idea of merit, by practical appreciation of the exclusive value of grace. Some one had objected that Bernard, by laying stress upon grace as the immanent principle of the entire Christian life, had done away with the idea of merit. This opponent had emphasized the then current Catholic apprehension of the matter, according to which grace gives the impulse and beginning to man’s own activity, whereby the continuance of the gifts of grace is merited even unto perfection. Da, inquit, gloriam Deo, qui gratis te prævenit, excitavit, initiavit, et vive digne de cetero, quo te probes perceptis beneficiis non ingratum et percipiendis idoneum. The discussion which Bernard raises in opposition to this principle proceeds entirely in the line of the traditional dogmas of Catholicism, in so far as it asserts the state of grace to be based upon the concurrence of grace and human freedom. It is the free will that is saved by grace. Tolle liberum arbitrium et non erit quod salvetur; tolle gratiam, non erit, unde salvetur. Since thus it is the free will that is the recipient of grace, the bestowal of grace is brought about through the active consent of the will. Ita gratiæ operanti salutem cooperari dicitur liberum arbitrium dum consentit, hoc est, dum salvatur. Consentire enim salvari est (cap. i. 2). If now grace be indispensably necessary in order that man may have a good will, it is at the same time implied in the very nature of free will, that the good acts of the will are merits by means of which good men enter into blessedness (vi. 18). Looked at as originating in grace, merits are themselves also gifts of God bestowed upon men out of His eternal decree, but yet they are called by the name of merits too, and deserve to be rewarded with blessedness on account of the co-operation of the free will with grace. Deus namque ante secula, cum operatus est salutem in medio terræ, dona sua, quæ dedit hominibus, in merita divisit et præmia, ut et præsentia per liberam possessionem nostra interim fierent merita, et futura per gratuitam sponsionem exspectaremus,imo expeteremus ut debita… . Ibi itaque Deus homini benigna merita constituit, ubi per ipsum et cum ipso boni quippiam operari dignanter instituit (xiii. 43, 45).

The claims of Catholic dogma once satisfied, however, by this method of rhetorical antitheses—a method for which the model was offered by Augustine—Bernard, by the help of the same master, rises to the purely religious view of the entire practical life of the Christian as a continuous work of Divine grace. Although, indeed, the meritorious character of a good work depends, so far as man is concerned, on the concurrence of his will with grace, yet even that act of concurrence is not, properly speaking, one that comes of man, cum ne cogitare aliquid a nobis quasi ex nobis sufficientes sumus… . Si ergo Deus bonum cogitare, velle, perficere operatur in nobis, primum profecto sine nobis, secundum nobiscum, tertium per nos facit… . Ita tamen, quod a sola gratia cæptum est, pariter ab utroque perficitur ut mixtim, non singillatim, simul, non vicissim per singulos profectus operentur. Non partim gratia, partim liberum arbitrium, sed totum singula opere individuo peragunt. Totum quidem hoc, et totum illa, sed ut totum in illo, sic totum ex illa (xiv. 46, 47). In these sentences the religious insight passes beyond the limits within which the Catholic theory moves, the scheme of an indissoluble contiguity of grace and freedom, which contiguity always at the same time, however, implies and expresses their separateness. Putting this view aside, Bernard refers the good work in its entirety to God’s grace when viewed from the religious point of view, and to the freedom of the will rendered free by grace when viewed from the moral point of view. He has intuititively seized the twofold thought upon which evangelical Christianity is practically based, and in which evangelical theology must ever recognise it as her task to show the harmony, or at least non-contradictoriness, of its two members. For as religiously we attribute the goodness of our will entirely to God, and give it no scope for meritorious value towards God, on that very account we become conscious of our position of moral independence as towards any tutelage that is not divine, and therefore, especially, as towards that of the hierarchy.

The quotations just made from Bernard betoken a temporary elevation above that sphere of vision in which the idea of merit has its place. He soons recurs to the recognition of this idea in such antitheses as those we have already seen. Fasts and vigils, continence and deeds of benevolence, and all the other exercises of virtue wherein the inner man is renewed from day to day, are gifts of God as being produced in us through the operation of His Spirit; but, as being wrought with the concurrence of our wills, they are merits. In God’s justice they merit blessedness; that justice, however, proceeds more upon the free promise of the reward of grace which God has made than upon any absolutely binding obligation on His part towards men. Yet even on this point Bernard at the close of his treatise reverts to that purely religious manner of thinking, which does away with the idea of merit. Si proprie appellentur ea, quæ dicimus nostra merita, spei quædam sunt seminaria, caritatis incentiva, occultæ prædestinationis indicia, futuræ felicitatis præsagia, VIA REGNI NON CAUSA REGNANDI. Denique quos justificavit, non quos justos invenit, hos et magnificavit (xiv. 49, 50, 51). The fact that Bernard was able to reach this thought, while yet he did not repudiate in its favour the Catholic doctrine, but, on the contrary, always recurred to it, is to be explained by the circumstance that in this particular work he waived that characteristic point of the Catholic doctrine which was insisted on by his opponent. He completely disregards the supposition that by those who are in the state of grace the continuance and increase of grace are merited. For as soon as this inference is drawn from the then prevalent scheme of grace and freedom, it is no longer possible fully to carry out that superiority of grace above freedom which results from a religious estimate of self; nor is it possible to neutralize, in a practical way, the freedom that is theoretically conceded to be the formal cause of the state of grace. And as matter of fact, the anti-evangelical tendency of Catholicism, as commonly taught, does not originate in the idea of merit as a whole; for, as even Thomas shows, that idea can at any moment be caused to disappear by falling back on the strict conception of grace: the main root of that tendency is rather the bearing that merit is supposed to have upon the increase of grace. That supposition inevitably imparts to the consciousness that allows itself to be possessed by it, the impression of a reciprocal action between grace and free-will; and the human tendency to self-assertion that corresponds to such a supposition will rise in rebellion against the dominion of the general notion of grace as long as the idea prevails that the possession of special grace is dependent on the meritorious effort of its own will.

In Bernard’s sermons¹⁰ passages are to be found that harmonize with the views laid down in the tractate we have just been considering. The 105th, de diversis, distinguishes between justification and glorification as degrees in the state of grace. Neque enim poterit obtineri magnificatio, nisi justificatio præcesserit, cum ista meritum, illa præmium sit. Both are wrought by God; but beatification exceeds our powers, while justification directly demands them. Sic enim adimpletur justificatio dum ab interdictis vitiis abstinent, et bona, quæ præcepta sunt, fideliter exercent. In his sermon in octava Epiphaniæ Bernard exhorts adimplere omnem justitiam in order that the joy of beatification may be attained. For that is the reward, justitia vero meritum et materia… . Nunc videtur laboriosa justitia, sed veniet quando sine omni labore fruemur justitia… . In the fourth sermon pro Dom. 1 Novemb. he interprets the aspect of the seraphim, who cover their faces and feet with their wings, and thus suffer only the middle part of their bodies to be seen, as indicating that the beginning and completion of the state of grace are exclusively works of the grace of God, but that in the interval between them the free will has a measure of efficacy meriti gratia. Thus currency is given to that idea, although what purpose it serves does not appear, when at the same moment it is declared that the accomplishment of salvation is purely the effect of grace, nec est mihi in hac parte vel cum gratia sive in ea gloriari, quasi coadjutor videar aut cooperator. This does not prevent him in another place (in Quadragesima, sermo 4) from recommending the practice of fasting as a means of averting eternal punishment:—non solum obtinet veniam sed et promeretur gratiam, non solum delet peccata quæ commisimus, sed et repellit futura, quæ committere poteramus.

Notwithstanding these fundamental views (which are genuinely Catholic), Bernard is very far indeed in his sermons from countenancing any trust in the present works of the free will aided by grace. Nay rather, while taking for granted that his hearers are actually busying themselves in good and meritorious works, he is constantly exhorting them simply to disregard their own contributions to these merits, and to take into account only the operation of God’s grace in them, or, generally, to direct their attention away from these particular works to God as the founder of every hope of salvation.¹¹ Paradoxically, he says that the humility which renounces all claim to merit, and trusts in God alone, is the only merit which has any value.¹² But not only does he affirm God’s grace to be the sole sufficient foundation on which the state of grace depends in all its stages, in order to counteract every temptation to self-righteousness; he gives prominence also to the mercy of God, in the sense that it alone in the constant imperfection of all good works and merits can be a ground of confidence that we are in a state of grace.¹³ In this matter Bernard reaches precisely the way of thinking that is habitual with Luther, who fixes his attention rather on the relative imperfection than on the relative perfection of the works attainable by the regenerate, while Bernard, as has been seen, plainly pronounces an unvarying decision for the exclusive value of God’s grace alike from either side of the question. It is of course implied in the very nature of the case that greater stress should be laid upon grace, when the believer calls to remembrance the imperfection of all his works, and impresses himself with the contrast they present to the requirements of God’s law, than when by going back from his performances to divine grace he realizes to himself the sequence of its operations. So much the more strongly on that account does the conviction arise in the former case that believing confidence is the organ whereby the pardoning grace or mercy of God is appropriated.¹⁴ In this view of faith Bernard again necessarily rises to the level of Luther’s thought, for mere intellectual belief and the faith that is formed by love alike fall short of what these statements express; and the confusion between faith and hope which is occasionally made in treating of this question has not here the effect of relegating the compassionate grace of God from the present to the future. It is true that Bernard occasionally brings the general thought of God’s grace into connexion with the contemplation of the passion of Christ;¹⁵ in this matter, however, he by no means comes up to the clear view of the Reformers, but entirely confines himself to a variety of figurative and fanciful expressions which have their closest analogues in the writings of Zinzendorf. This circumstance, however, does not affect the coincidence which, as we have seen, is to be found between Bernard and the Reformers, in so far as in common they regarded the moral self-consciousness of the regenerate as being modified and controlled by being referred to the religious standard of the grace of God.

18. St. Bernard’s influence is seen throughout the whole ascetic and homiletic literature of the Middle Ages; but traces of the line of thought we have been describing are much more rarely to be met with than might have been expected from that circumstance. This, however, is accounted for by the fact, that the impulse towards a practical imitation of Christ’s poverty, given by the two mendicant orders, came to have a central place in religion. In it is carried out the scheme of salvation briefly indicated by Anselm and Abelard, which represents, in the stricter sense, the Catholic view of Christianity. Poverty is the ascetic imitation of Christ, and the direct reciprocation of His self-sacrificing love of men. Of course it claims to be the gospel type of piety, and to be on that account the peculiarly Catholic one. Nor did it confine itself within the limits of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, properly so called; rather by means of that activity in preaching, which constituted the principal business of these orders, and by the institution of the Tertiary orders, it gained a widely diffused influence throughout the whole ecclesiastical world. The real tendency of the gospel was not, however, carried out in this way. Since there was no clear idea of the positive conditions under which the world should be changed into the kingdom of God, the purpose of drawing it aside to the life of the cloister could not fail to be ineffectual so far as the world was concerned, and, at the same time, ultimately ruinous to the monasticism of the mendicant orders. In both orders the practical impulse found in mystical contemplation its complement and, also, its correction; for the sense of having done meritoriously, when aroused, had immediately to be put aside, along with everything pertaining to the creature, in rising to contemplation of the infinitude of God. Mystical contemplation, however, has a different purpose, and proceeds upon conditions and postulates other than those which regulate the religious estimate of one’s own moral value by reference to the conception of grace revealed in Christ. The former seems to reach a higher level than the latter, and for this reason, perhaps, at the time when the mendicant orders flourished most, it might seem that the lower could be dispensed with where the higher was believed to be attainable. The particular tendency of the mendicant orders, on the one hand, to the practice of meritorious works, and, on the other hand, to mystical contemplation, was not counteracted by means of the study of the Bible, although the attention paid to it at that time was considerable;—the explanation of which is, that to the men of that time the Bible did not open up the immediate satisfaction of their religious needs in the passion and death of Christ as the basis of the reconciliation of mankind, because they were wont to use the empirico-practical notion of individual imitation of His poverty as the true key to the understanding of the life of Christ. The barrenness of such an attempt at imitation had first, therefore, to be experimentally proved before the general significance of Christ’s passion as the basis of the covenant of grace, which involves in it the forgiveness of sins, could rank higher than its particular significance as an ascetic pattern for individual believers. Further, it was necessary that the aspiration after a mystical exaltation into the infinite and boundless being of God should be first discovered in a practical way to be illusory, before men could again get hold of that concrete love which God has openly shown in Christ, as the means of correcting personal moral imperfection.

We can now understand why it is that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries offer so few instances of the religious estimate of self, which Bernard exemplifies. But this deficiency is compensated for in a remarkable way by the very man who led the prevailing religious tendencies of those centuries—Saint Francis of Assisi. He was able to give to his contemporaries, and to succeeding generations, that grand impulse to the imitation of Christ’s poverty, because his own religious genius surrendered itself unreservedly, without the slightest consciousness of merit in his works, to the assured persuasion of the grace of God. The whole structure of his life accords with that mode of thought whereby Bernard was able to rise above the catholic theological scheme of divine grace and human freedom. If Bernard, in spite of his theological training, was able to rise above all thought of merit towards God, Francis, by virtue of his very deficiency in theological education, was fitted for idealizing his strenuous activity in imitation of Christ’s poverty and bearing of His cross by a complete renunciation of all pretension to personal merit in himself. Hereby he religiously ennobled the original simplicity of his nature in such a measure, that the sincerity and uprightness of his humility outweigh everything which by an appearance of constrained mannerism might tend to estrange us from him. Should it be necessary to show this otherwise than by reference to the attractive sketch of his life for which we are indebted to Hase,¹⁶ I would simply point to those expressions in which Francis not only refers all that he did to God’s grace and wisdom, but speaks of himself as sinful and worthless without these.¹⁷

Amongst the Franciscans and Dominicans who are eminent in the following centuries as practical and mystical preachers, it will not be possible to find traces of the prevalence of a piety of this stamp. In some cases there prevails stricter regard to the Catholic dogma, strengthened by the attribution of value to the practice of a life of poverty and humility; in other cases what is most insisted on is constant resort to the sacraments of penance and the eucharist; in other cases still, mystical elevation out of and above the sphere of created life into the infinity of the Divine Being (whereby the influences of semi-pelagianism are escaped). Yet even in these circles isolated hints of Bernard’s way of thinking occasionally reveal themselves. On the one hand, Antony of Padua, a Franciscan, is explicit in declaring, in words avowedly borrowed from Bernard, that the blood of Christ is so strong a proof of the mercy of God, that no one is shut out from a share in its influence, and conversely, that he only is genuinely humble who neither suffers himself to be praised for his good works, nor permits himself to be called humble: but in relation to the grace of God within him is determined to pass for simply nothing.¹⁸ In the sermons of John Tauler, a Dominican, on the other hand, there crops up once and again this same view of Bernard’s, although, as is truly remarked by one who has made this province of history peculiarly his own,¹⁹ the ideas of reconciliation and justification through Christ are of minor importance in Tauler’s writings when compared with the striving after mystic union with God, and after the imitation of Christ.

It is a very common assumption with evangelical theologians that the mysticism which proceeds from the school of the Dominican Eckhart, as it is also represented by Tauler, Suso, and the compiler of the so-called deutsche Theologie, is in part a pre-Reformation exhibition of Reformation ways of thinking, and in part, through the last-mentioned book, the very source where Luther found his Reformation principles. To come to details—I do not think I am mistaken when I say that Ullmann has given important support to that belief by his assertion that in the deutsche Theologie are contained the essential constituent elements of the Reformation way of thinking.²⁰ A judgment so decided, even although it be rash and unsupported, could not fail to make a deeper impression than the more careful and guarded statement made by Ullmann at a later point (p. 279 f.), as to the general analogy between German mysticism and the Reformation movement. And accordingly it is received as an axiom of Church History, even by those who are worthy of every confidence in their own proper field.²¹ If it be indeed true that the deutsche Theologie embodies the essentials of the Reformation doctrine, then the whole of the mysticism of the school of Eckhart is of a Reformation character. For the pantheistic principles of the school are not differently expressed in it than by Eckhart and Tauler; and the main problem of mysticism, which is the annihilation of the personality of the creature, in order to union with God, is asserted by the Frankfort priest of the German order in the very hyper-ethical metaphysical sense of his predecessors. So that, if we take literally the assertion of Luther that to the deutsche Theologie, next to the Bible and Augustine, he is most indebted for what he has learned about “God, Christ, man, and all things,”²² we have no reason for withholding from the older mystical theologians, beginning with Eckhart, the honour transferred to their servile follower, of having been the fathers of the German Reformation. But Luther’s declaration ought not to be used in this way if we would avoid a hurtful misapprehension. Between the problem which the mystics seek to solve, and that of the Reformers, there undeniably exists a certain analogy, in virtue whereof Luther was able to sympathize with particular isolated assertions and exhortations of theirs when isolated from their premisses in the system, and understood in his own sense. But the problem how to get rid of one’s personal individuality, as created, in order to attain to union with God, and absorption in His Being, is quite distinct from the problem how to renounce one’s own merit in order to gain by confidence in Christ’s merit a standing before God, and peace of conscience in spite of the sense of sin. The two problems differ not merely in compass but also in kind. It is not that the mystical consciousness merely aims higher than the other, so that the latter, perhaps, might be regarded as tacitly included in the former. The two standpoints are essentially distinct. For the religious task of the mystic is based upon a comparison between the Creator and the creature, metaphysically considered, and is designed to do away with the distance that the fact of creation establishes between the two. The religious task of the Reformer proceeds upon the moral contrast between the man who, while actually in the state of grace, is yet imperfect and sinful, on the one hand, and the lawgiver, on the other, and has for its object that revelation of God’s grace in Christ, which is both the ground and the rule of all consciousness of salvation that is possible to the Church. In the one case it is sought to extirpate the individuality of man altogether; in the other case, what is desired is the maintenance of his ethical personality in the strictest sense.²³ This is the reason why the consciousness of justification, when it awoke at the Reformation, could develop force enough to contend against the institutions of the Church of Rome, while the mystics acquiesced in them all. Nor did they even pave the way for the Reformation by developing that free inner life, that subjectivity and individuality, which, according to Ullmann (p. 280), were entirely confined to them during the Middle Ages. For their fundamental principle is really an exhortation to the utter extirpation of individuality, and the amount of thought and perseverance they devote to this absurd task does not exceed the measure of thoughtfulness and depth of feeling which could very well be associated with the scholastic style, and were indeed demanded by it. It is a surprising mistake, that one should for a moment imagine that the scholastic theology lays the foundation of a dead legality of life, and that the development of depth of subjective feeling lies quite beyond its scope; for the declaration common to all the schoolmen is precisely this, that justification through grace consists in the infusion of love. And surely, within the limits of Protestantism itself there are tendencies which, without in the least degree intending to break loose from the Reformation, yet check the development of free inner life, of subjectivity and individuality; the weak and conventional “illumination” does so as well as the dry orthodoxy of the school. The mystics of the fourteenth century can never be made out to be anything but thoroughly mediæval figures. They are not lifted out of their ecclesiastical surroundings in any specific way by the peculiarity of their religious principle, and whoever assigns to them a Reformation character abandons history just as much as those do who assign to the old Catholic Church an Ebionitic character and origin. In particular, we cannot assign the origin of the Reformation to the mystic school for these among other reasons: that notoriously the revolutionary reformation by the Anabaptists originated from the mystic type of piety, and that it is impossible to treat the Reformation fairly except by maintaining that specific distinction between it and the Anabaptist revolution of which the Reformers themselves were convinced. It is therefore radically wrong to seek within the sphere of the German mysticism of the fourteenth century for the mediæval basis of the fundamental conception of the Reformation as set forth by Luther and Zwingli. These anticipations of that manner of estimating self, brought into prominence by the Reformers, which are certainly to be found in the sentences quoted from Tauler, are not at all characteristic of mysticism, and on that account are so trifling in compass and importance as to be almost lost sight of amongst the mystical tendencies of that preacher.

19. A return to that immediate consciousness of the grace of God which we have seen in Bernard was first made in the fifteenth century, when on the one hand the productivity of mysticism had exhausted itself, and on the other the practical impulse given by the mendicant orders in the direction of a humble imitation of Christ’s life of poverty had been transformed by the theology of Duns the Franciscan and his nominalist followers into a prevailing tendency towards meritorious action.²⁴ In that age of dry logic and common sense, in which even mysticism was maintained as a publicly taught system of doctrine only by the nominalist John Gerson, who discusses the conditions of the intuition of God as a part of the theory of knowledge—John Staupitz discovered in the distinct effort of reflection upon God’s grace and love that very counterpoise to the pretensions of work-righteousness as ordinarily practised in the Western Church which corresponds to the model of Augustine and Bernard. Staupitz is in direct historical connexion with Luther as a master; but whether he himself owes his own style of thought to the influence of particular persons it is impossible to ascertain.²⁵ His writings, however, leave the impression of no small originality, and it were much to be wished that Luther had attached himself theologically to his adviser and friend still more closely than he actually did. Staupitz’s book, De exsecutione æternæ prædestinationis (1517), which, viewed as a systematic work, is a very important one, in fact counts kindred more with Zwingli’s De providentia Dei anemnema than with Luther’s tract directed against Erasmus. Now Staupitz separates himself from the mystical theologians of the fourteenth century definitely and specifically by establishing the concrete personal idea of love as an element of our idea of God; here again, therefore, it leads to nothing but error when Ullmann (p. 256) makes him out to be the congenial successor of the mystics. For mysticism, properly speaking, in the first instance consists in that style of pious meditation dominated by the Areopagite’s conception of God, wherein it is sought as something attainable even in the present earthly state to pass beyond all intervening objects until the individual consciousness be lost in the undifferentiated Being of God; the schoolmen on the other hand conceived of this as only possible in the life after death. Mystical theology is accordingly in the French school this pious contemplation put into a psychological theory; in the German school of Eckhart it is the theory, identical with that pious view, which discerns all things in the indeterminate oneness of the Divine Being; it is the theory of Pantheism, which only seemingly or only in virtue of inconsequence maintains itself in harmony with the Catholic dogma. With this theory Staupitz has nothing in common. But in the tractate Von der Liebe Gottes (1518) he undoubtedly makes statements of a mystical character, to the effect that by perfect love towards God man comes to be merged in Him so as to have no choice or activity of his own, that then the human spirit cleaves fast to God in such a manner as to be called one spirit, and that thereby man shakes himself free of himself and of every created thing.²⁶ But it would be wrong to make use of these expressions as if they were normal. For in the tractate Vom christlichen Glauben (chap. 10) he reserves for the life beyond the grave that unspeakable union, and thus puts himself in opposition to the mystics. But even were this not so, it no more follows from his assertion of the unio mystica that the theology of Staupitz is essentially mystical than that the Lutheran theology is to be classed as such on account of a similar assertion.

Staupitz, in fact, in such of his writings as we possess, declares himself, distinctly and without circumlocution, theologically to uphold the Catholic idea of justification. “The sinner is justified by regeneration. In this new birth God is the father, the will is the mother, the quickening seed is the merit of Christ. Wherever these three things concur, the Son of God is brought forth, justified and quickened through faith which worketh by love.”²⁷ He accordingly adopts also the idea of merits rewarded by God with blessedness; but he hastens to add that, since grace is the ground of good works, God therefore rewards in the justified person His own works. For as God is the last operative cause in all operations, so also in us He has special works—the works of the faith formed in us. These proceed from Christ and return to Christ (as their end), and are therefore, in a particular sense, called works of Christ, although formally they are in man, and not God’s, except in a merely external sense, for in themselves they are finite in nature and extent. Since now they belong to a finite person and in their nature are finite, it is therefore impossible that any righteousness of infinite merit, to which an infinite reward were due, should be founded on them. If, then, God has determined to bestow Himself as their reward, it comes of grace, not of debt. Since justification is a grace, and the acceptance of the works wrought in grace is also a grace which makes them meritorious (this with Duns as against Thomas), and since the merit of Christ is also ours through grace, the whole Christian’s life is fitly brought under the idea of grace, and there is easily merged in that idea what is usually attributed to the reasonable creature, namely, the mastery or proper control of his own works from their beginning to their ending. For the beginning of the work of the Christian man is in Providence, the middle of it is justification, the ending of it is glorification or exaltation, which are works of grace and not of nature.²⁸ In like manner also in his treatise Von der Liebe Gottes, Staupitz is wholly intent on subordinating all human action under antecedent Divine love. Our hope is built in no manner of way upon the love which we bear toward God, but upon the love which God has towards us—upon the works which God works in us (p. 101). He therefore declares against the folly of those men who flatter themselves that they are able, by their good deed, to move God at their pleasure, and to win Him to them with their devoutness, as a sparrow-hawk is drawn to carrion. These claim precedence over God’s mercy, bring to market filthy rags, would fain buy gold with filth and be made blessed by means of their own righteousness, and, to vindicate their folly, make use of the teachings of holy masters whom they do not understand (p. 108). Although now the love inwrought in us by God at one time increases and at another time diminishes in degree, it is not without special consolation to know that the love which God bears towards us neither diminishes nor increases, and often, without our knowing it, does the very best for us when we least think it. So that we feel the greater confidence in God just as we lose confidence in ourselves, and no longer trusting to our own powers, look to the cross of Christ alone (p. 110).²⁹

The same theological adherence to the Catholic doctrine of justification in conjunction with a similar elevation of devotional feeling and of religious estimation of self, in attributing exclusive value to God’s grace, had been already observable at an earlier period in the case of John Wessel. I can hardly understand how it is that Ullmann could assert³⁰ that, with regard to the material principle of the Reformation, in “carrying back the Christian life to the redemption and justification that is in Christ, to the exclusion of all other means of salvation that are merely of man’s appointment,” Wessel was at one with Luther and the contemporaries of Luther. In so far as such language can be applied with justice to Wessel’s doctrine, it is very far from accurately expressing the distinguishing characteristics of the Reformation teaching. And further, it is purely and explicitly the Romish doctrine which Ullmann himself (p. 514) reproduces in the following quotation from Wessel: “The taking away of sin is nothing else than the possession of justifying love; for he who is without that, abides in sin. In order that Christ, therefore, may take away our sins, He must needs infuse righteousness.” It is indeed true, on the other hand, that Wessel, like Staupitz, lays the chief stress on Christ’s objective working for the accomplishment of this end, and not upon the instrumentality of human freedom. For he proceeds, “Christ is thus, in His assumed humanity, the operating cause of the justification of the ungodly, of grace and wisdom, of judgment and love, of their progress unto perfection, and of the completion of those who have been made perfect, that is, of beatification.”³¹ Both aspects of his teaching are to be found also further on in the book. Wessel proceeds to say that men are not made righteous by the works of the law, since, being sinners, they do not accomplish these with the requisite degree of perfection (cap. 45, 46). Sinners are accordingly made righteous through faith in Christ—that faith, namely, which worketh by love. Faith has not, of course, a value which comes up to the active perfection of the angels; yet it pleased God to grant to believers greater righteousness than to the angels, the righteousness, to wit, of the priestly functions of Christ, whereby believers are righteous even if they do not work righteousness perfectly (cap. 45). Or, as it is expressed in another connexion, it is not our faith that is our righteousness, but the purpose of God, who, in the sacrifice of Christ, accepts our sacrifice. In the blood of Christ there is not merely the forgiveness of sins, but justification also and blessedness (cap. 44). Our works and spiritual sacrifices are in themselves unable to stand the judgment of God; but since by faith we have part in Christ’s perfect sacrifice, we shall stand as righteous before God’s strict judgment, by means of that participation and by means of our own spiritual sacrifices (cap. 39). But in spite of these sound Catholic views, Wessel is not disposed to lay weight upon the proper works and performances of those who are in Christ: his whole feeling relies upon the cross of Christ alone, and the gracious purpose of God. Vere dignum et justum in cruce Christi gloriari, ex qua maxime nostra dignitas innotescit, per quam secura nobis fiducia et pignus datur ad nostram illam dignitatem, quæ nobis per crucem innotuit certissime reditura (cap. 42). Super omnia gloriemur in Deo, per Christum suam in nobis caritatem commendante (cap. 44). Qui evangelium audiens credit,—præterea amat evangelisatum justificantem et beatificantem, quantalibet pro consequendo faciat et patiatur, non sua opera, non se operantem extollit, sed propensus in eum quem amat,—nihil sibi ipsi tribuit, qui scit nihil habere ex se. Scit ergo, si nihil habet, nisi quod acceperit, non de suo gloriandum, quasi non acceperit sed in eo gloriandum, qui donat. Vere omnes justitiæ nostræ velut pannus menstruatæ,—ut vere non tum justi, sed mere injusti plectendique convincamur (cap 46). Finally, I would point to his Exempla scalæ meditationis, three very elaborate tracts, in which the pedantic arrangement and rhetorical style do not affect the definiteness with which Wessel places his whole assurance of salvation in that love which Christ showed in giving up His life for us.

Besides Wessel, Ullmann has represented two other men of the fifteenth century, John von Goch and John von Wesel, as having been “Reformers previous to the Reformation.” If we leave out of sight the general conception of what constitutes a “reformation” character as stated in the book that bears that title,—a conception so vague as to assign that character not merely to those chiefly practical and biblical theologians, but also to phenomena so completely heterogeneous and thoroughly mediæval as are pantheistic mysticism and scholastic nominalism,—then the connexion of these men with the Reformation amounts merely to this, that they disputed one or two of the institutions of the Romish Church—the vows, for example, and indulgences. Ullmann tries, however, to make too much of the value of that opposition of theirs. As in the case of Wessel, so here also his doing so can only be accounted for by his strangely defective understanding of the Catholic as well as of the Reformation doctrines of salvation. In speaking of Goch, indeed, he does not go so far as to maintain that he coincided with the Reformers in their doctrine of justification; he concedes that “the doctrine of justification through faith alone does not as yet come into prominence as the central point dominating everything, in the same measure as with the Reformers.”³² But Ullmann’s own excerpts from the writings of Goch (from p. 77 onwards) show that that author holds nothing different from the regular Romish doctrine of justification. Ullmann finds this besides to praise specially in Goch, that he strictly excluded all human merit. His own excerpts, however, prove only that Goch, like Staupitz, controverted Thomas’s conception of merit by means of that of Duns and the Nominalists. Nor does John von Wesel stand in any closer connexion with the Reformers upon the decisive question of justification. For what Ullmann³³ alleges as a proof that he did so stand, is, in fact, a Catholic doctrine;—this, namely, that Christ is our righteousness, in so far as we are guided by the Holy Ghost, and the love of God (towards God) is shed abroad in our hearts. The same want of knowledge of the Catholic doctrine is shared also by the biographer of another so-called forerunner of the Reformation. Of Hieronymus Savonarola it is certified by Charles Meier,³⁴ that he “clearly apprehended the real core of the Reformation—the doctrine of justification without the merit of works, through grace, in faith,”—and yet, from the subsequent sketch of his doctrine, it is established indubitably that he was a Thomist!³⁵ Of John Wyclif, too, Lechler³⁶ brings it forward as something special, that “although his mode of expression is not without a scholastic character, particularly in the recognition of merits, he is yet far removed from holding the theory of work-righteousness, and rather inclines to hold by the free grace God in Christ. He declares the notion of meritum de congruo to be a fabrication. He accentuates, on the other hand, the truth that faith is a gift of God, which is only bestowed of grace; and that God, when He rewards a man’s good work, crowns His own gift.” This is Thomist theology; and he who controverts meritum de congruo, impugns Nominalism indeed, but no part of the doctrine of the Romish Church. Equally inaccurate is Krummel’s affirmation,³⁷ that John Hus is Protestant in his doctrine of justification. His own excerpts prove that Hus maintained the Catholic doctrine merely. For, as I have already said (above, p. 91), all the characteristics of justification as a work of grace enumerated there, are asserted by the realist teachers of the mediæval Church; but they understand by the main idea of justification something different from what the Reformers understood, and so also there is a difference with regard to the faith which pertains to justification. It cannot, however, matter much whether the Reformation doctrine of justification was enunciated previous to the Reformers or not. For it was not from this theological doctrine that the Reformation proceeded. It is enough for me at present that the practical self-estimate of believers, according to the standard of grace,—an estimate which excludes all value of merits,—an estimate used alike by Augustine and Bernard,—was clearly and plainly reached in the fifteenth century by Wessel and Staupitz. For this practical consciousness was the root of the Reformation activity of both Luther and Zwingli.

20. And yet that concentration of attention upon grace, and that renunciation of all claim to merit, of which we have been speaking, is not confined merely to single distinguished individuals within the Catholic Church: in a certain sense it constitutes a constant and characteristic feature of the Roman Catholic Church itself. Whenever she places herself in the attitude of prayer, it is inevitable that in the expression of her religious discernment, in thanksgiving and in petition, all the benefits of salvation should be referred to God or to Christ; the daily need for new grace, accordingly, is not expressed in the form of a claim based upon merits, but in the form of reliance upon God.³⁸ But consciousness of sin, the worthlessness of merits before God, and the utter need of sin-pardoning grace for our salvation, are expressed and taught in the strictest way in a prayer of the Romish Canon of the Mass, which naturally, on account of this connexion, has supreme significance for the Church: Nobis quoque PECCATORIBUS, famulis tuis, de multitudine MISERATIONUM tuarum sperantibus, partem aliquam et societatem donare digneris cum … omnibus sanctis tuis, intra quorum nos consortium NON ÆSTIMATOR MERITI, SED VENIÆ, quæsumus, LARGITOR admitte.

When this testimony of Roman Catholicism is considered, it is fitted to cause surprise, that its point of view should have been practically resorted to so comparatively seldom, and only in instances so isolated during the centuries of the middle ages. On the other side, too, the Romish opponents of the Reformation in the sixteenth century were well aware that this manner of estimating self was either of obligation, or else that it represented the highest degree of piety, and one to be sought after.³⁹ I do not think it probable that such a line of thought in these circles was first of all brought again to recollection by the circumstance that the Reformers laid so great stress upon it. Rather even before the controversy broke out it had already come into prominence quite distinctly among theologians who

p. 186. Virtutis infer copiam, Qua conferas clementiam, Oblitus ut peccaminum Dones quietem temporum. p. 189. Infunde nunc piissime Donum perennis gratiæ, Fraudis novæ ne casibus Nos error atterat vetus. p. 193. Ob hoc redemptor quæsumus, Reple tuo nos lumine, Per quod dierum circulis Nullis ruamus actibus. p. 216. Da tempus acceptabile Et pœnitens cor tribue, Convertat ut benignitas, Quos longa suffert pietas. p. 221. O crux ave, spes unica, Hoc passionis tempore Auge piis justitiam Reisque dona veniam.

are far removed from the circle of the Reformers. I think I may venture to conjecture that towards the end of the fifteenth century, contemporaneously with the fall into discredit of the monkish work-righteousness, and the complete disappearance of the Nominalist school, there began a general recurrence on the part of men to this fundamental Augustinian principle of the religious life; and particularly that the leaning of the Wittenberg theologians towards Augustine was originally only a branch-movement in that general agitation of the Church. George Cassander, in a passage I shall immediately cite, refers to the fact that not only the Parisian theologian, Iodocus Clichtoveus (ob. 1543), but also the theologian of Louvain, Adrian of Utrecht (Pope Adrian VI.), obviously following Bernard (p. 100, note, ad fin.), plainly pronounced against the value of meritorious works, making use of the figure employed in Isa. lxiv. 6.⁴⁰ But Cassander himself, at the close of a series of testimonies, adduces the evidence of these contemporaries to show that the universal Church had occupied this standpoint from the very beginning. He says, “With regard to the righteousness which consists in obeying the commandments of God, the universal Church declares that she depends chiefly upon faith in the forgiveness of sins, upon the mercy of God, through the instrumentality of Christ’s blood, being in herself impure and imperfect.” (Here follow testimonies taken from all ages of the Church.) “It appeared to me good to write this, in order that the Church of the present might be vindicated from reproach, as if she attributed too much to this active righteousness and to the merit of good works, and treated with ingratitude and contempt the merit of Christ, and also in order that the Protestants might more easily be able to attach themselves to the unity of the Church in this essential point of justification before God.” ⁴¹

That this expectation was not realized is to be attributed to the following circumstance, apart from the causes that may lie below the surface. The real position of the public doctrine which the Reformation had to do with, was on neither side apprehended or stated with historical accuracy and truth. The theological opponents of the Reformation, who were exclusively Realists, utterly ignore the fact that the Nominalist school, throughout an entire century and a half, had maintained Pelagian doctrine in connexion with merita de congruo, and had over-estimated merita de condigno as compared with the merit of Christ; that, as a school, Nominalism had received just the same public recognition with Realism; and both scientifically and practically had exercised a more widely extended influence. The Reformers, on the other hand, level against scholasticism, as a whole, the charges of Pelagianism, which are in reality true of the nominalist doctrine only.⁴² And yet, even if these causes of mutual misunderstanding had been removed in time, the two parties would still have failed to adjust their differences by means of that common confession. For, just in order to leave room for merits, the followers of Rome tolerated the incongruity between the religious estimate of self that is gained when we judge ourselves exclusively in the light of divine grace, and the dogma of real justification. The Reformers, on the other hand, found themselves warranted and driven to bring the theological doctrine into harmony with the practical consciousness of grace. Can any one rationally deny that the actually righteous person, in placing his confidence without any regard to his own merits (non æstimator meriti) for the attainment of blessedness solely in God’s forgiving grace (sed veniæ largitor), solicits such a sentence of God as shall mercifully (de multitudini miserationum tuarum) regard as righteous one who is conscious that, so far as his own merits are concerned, he is unrighteous (nobis peccatoribus)? Since such a subjective renunciation of all claim to merit is enjoined (non æstimator meriti), there must necessarily be assigned to this synthetic judgment of justification (veniæ largitor—nobis peccatoribus), a scope and significance reaching, so far as God is concerned, beyond that real change in man whereby it is possible for him to produce good works as merits. It is on the observation of this fact that the Reformers base their undertaking theologically to distinguish justification from regeneration, and to place the former as a divine sentence passed on the sinner before his actual renewal through the Holy Ghost. Of course the business of the Reformation is not exhausted in this attempt at a reconstruction of the doctrine; but such a reconstruction also is a necessary feature in that reformation of the church’s life which Luther and Zwingli brought about by means of the leading idea of a religious estimate of self, in the light of God’s grace alone.

The Roman Catholic Church, adhering to the doctrinal decisions of the Council of Trent, still continues to oscillate between the one view and the other. In her communion, people are assured of their ability to accomplish good works in statu justificationis per gratiam, whereby they satisfy divinæ legi pro hujus vitæ statu plene (what a contradiction!), and actually merit eternal life as a reward; but, at the same time, they do not forget that these merits are still only God’s gifts of grace, so that one cannot attach value to them as being one’s own works (Sess. vi. decr. de Iustificatione, cap. 16). Hence the pledge of the continued religious solidarity of the Western Church is given by no means indistinctly in the closing sentences in this doctrinal decree, although obscured by their reference to merits, which is as deliberate as it is illogical: Absit ut Christianus homo in se ipso vel confidat vel glorietur, et non in domino, cujus tanta est erga omnes homines bonitas, ut eorum velit esse merita, quæ sunt ipsius dona. Et quia in multis offendimus omnes, unusquisque sicut misericordiam et bonitatem, ita severitatem et judicium ante oculos habere debet, neque seipsum aliquis, etiamsi nihil sibi conscius fuerit, judicare, quoniam omnis hominum vita non humano judicio examinanda et judicanda est, sed Dei, qui illuminabit abscondita tenebrarum et manifestabit consilia cordium; et tunc laus erit unicuique a Deo qui, ut scriptum est, reddet unicuique secundum opera sua. In contrast with this, the fundamental fact of the exclusive importance of grace is unreservedly laid down in the exhortation to the dying which the official agenda of the Romish Church⁴³ prescribe, to the effect that the dying must repose their confidence upon Christ and His passion as the sole ground of salvation. This ordinance is the origin of the jocular saying current among the Lutherans in Württemberg, that every Catholic becomes a Lutheran before his death: the sober fact is, that the Romish Church, in dealing with her members at this point, sacrifices her own particular pretensions to the universal Christian truth.

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← Chapter II. The Ideas of Christ’s Satisfaction and Merit According to Thomas · Contents · Chapter IV. The Reformation Principle of Justification by Faith in Christ →

Footnotes

1. This distinction is explained, even if not rendered more intelligible to us, by art. 4, in which it is said, Implere mandata legis contingit dupliciter. Uno modo quantum ad substantiam operum et hoc modo homo in statu naturæ integræ potuit omnia mandata legis implere; alioquin homo non potuisset in illo statu non peccare. Alio modo … etiam quantum ad modum agendi, ut scilicet ex caritate fiant, et sic ne in statu naturæ integræ quidem potest homo absque gratia implere legis mandata. As if the fulfilment of the moral law did not necessarily depend upon having love for its motive! ↩

2. Which is in some measure suggested by Augustine (de Trin. xiii. 14): Justificamur in Christi sanguine, cum per remissionem peccatorum eruimur a diaboli potestate. ↩

3. For those who judge of Augustine merely by his doctrines of original sin and of predestination, and who on that account regard him principally as the patron of the Reformation system, it is not unnecessary to say that, taken as a whole, he is the patron and even the immediate founder of Western Catholicism, more particularly that from him comes all the material for the mediæval doctrines of grace and freedom, of justification and merit; and that the deductions drawn by the Reformers from his doctrines of sin and of predestination, as also their doctrine of justification, had never once occurred to him. This is not to deny that the Reformation is the logical result of that highest standard of piety which Augustine upholds. ↩

4. Sent. L. i. dist. 17, B. “ Spiritus sanctus amor est Patris et Filii quo se invicem amant et nos. Ipse idem Spiritus sanctus est amor sive caritas qua nos diligimus Deum et proximum.” ↩

5. Lib. i. dist. 17, qu. 3, § 25. Saltem principalius in merito est a Deo. Respondeo; si principalius dicatur ultimum completivum, concedatur; si vero dicatur prima realitas sive perfectior realitas, negetur, quia actus est absolutum quid et prius natura ista acceptatione divina, et magis ens ea. ↩

6. Epitoma et collectorium circa quatuor sententiarum libros. Lugduni, 1514. ↩

7. Bernardi Tractatus de erroribus Abaelardi (Opp. ed. Mabillon, Paris, 1690, vol. i. p. 655), cap. viii. 20: Ubi reconciliatio, ibi remissio peccatorum. Et quid ipsa, nisi justificatio? Sivi igitur reconciliatio, sive remissio peccatorum, sive justificatio sit, sive etiam redemtio, intercedente morte unigeniti obtinemus, justificati gratis in sanguine ipsius. In Cantica, sermo xxii. 6 (l. c. p. 1336): Christus est factus nobis sapientia, justitia, sanctificatio, redemtio. Sapientia in prædicatione, justitia in absolutione peccatorum, sanctificatio in conversatione, quam habuit cum peccatoribus, redemtio in passione. ↩

8. De error. Abael. cap. vi. 16: Alius, qui peccatorem constituit, alius, qui justificat a peccato; alter in semine, alter in sanguine… . Sicut enim in Adam omnes moriuntur, ita et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur. Si infectus ex illo originali concupiscantia, etiam Christi gratia spirituali perfusus sum. Quid mihi plus imputatur de prævaricatore? si generatio, regenerationem oppono… . Sane pervenit delictum ad me, sed pervenit et gratia… . Terrena nativitas perdit me, et non multo magis generatio cœlestis conservat me? Nec vereor sic erutus de potestate tenebrarum repelli a patre luminum, justificatus gratis in sanguine filii ejus. Nempe ipse, qui justificat, quis est, qui condemnat? Non condemnabit justum, qui misertus est peccatori. Justum me dixerim, sed illius justitia. Quæ ergo mihi justitia facta est, mea non est? Si mea traducta culpa, cur non et mea indulta justitia? ↩

9. This qualifies the similar assertion made by Melanchthon,—Apol. Conf. Aug. p. 99. Antonius, Bernhardus, Dominicus, Franciscus et alii sancti patres elegerunt certum vitæ genus, vel propter studium vel propter alia utilia exercitia. Interim sentiebant se fide propter Christum justos reputari et habere propitium Deum, non propter illa propria exercitia. Yet just this last statement finds its warrant in the following exposition. ↩

10. Sermones de tempore, de sanctis ac de diversis. Opp. vol. i. ↩

11. In psalm. xci., sermo 1. 1: Timeo ne forte sit in nobis, qui non habitat in adjutorio altissimi, sed confidat in virtute sua et in multitudine divitiarum suarum. Forte enim fervorem habet aliquis potens in vigiliis, in jejuniis, in labore, et in cæteris hujusmodi, aut etiam multorum, ut sibi videtur, divitias meritorum longo tempore acquisivit, et in his confidens remissior est in timore Dei… . Tanto siquidem amplius timere Deum et magis sollicitus esse debuerat, quanto majora ejus munera jam percepit. Neque enim, quæ habemus ab eo, servare aut tenere possumus sine eo.—Sermo 9. 1: Quid quod bona omnia non modo propter eum constat fieri, sed per eum? Deus enim est, qui operatur in vobis et velle et perficere pro bona voluntate. 5. Prætendat alter meritum, sustinere se jactet pondus diei et æstus, jejunare bis in sabbato dicat, postremo non esse sicut ceteros hominum glorietur; mihi autem adhærere Deo bonum est, ponere in Deo meo spem meam.—In octava Paschæ, sermo 1. 2: Quoties tentationi resistis, quoties vincis malignum, noli propriis tribuere viribus, noli in te sed magis in domino gloriari. —In festo annuntiationis Mariæ, sermo 1. 1: Testimonium spiritus in tribus consistere credo. Necesse est enim primo omnium credere, quod remissionem peccatorum habere non possis, nisi per indulgentiam Dei; deinde, quod nihil prorsus habere queas operis boni, nisi et hoc dederit ipse, postremo, quod æternam vitam nullis potes operibus promereri, nisi gratis tibi detur et illa. ↩

12. De diversis, sermo 26. 1: Insipiens est et insanus, quicunque in aliis vitæ meritis, quicunque in alia religione seu sapientia nisi in sola humilitate confidit. Apud Dominum jus habere non possumus, quoniam in multis offendimus omnes, sed nec fallere eum; ipse enim novit abscondita cordis, quanto magis opera manifesta… . Quid ergo restat, nisi ad humilitatis remedia tota mente confugere, et quidquid in aliis minus habemus, de ea supplere.—In psalm. xci., sermo 15. 5: Hoc totum hominis meritum, si totam spem suam ponit in eo, qui totum hominem salvum facit. ↩

13. In vigilia nativitatis Dom., sermo 2. 4: Nolite timere, si perfectionem, quam desideratis, nondum potestis adipisci; sed quod minus habet imperfectio conversationis, suppleat humilitas confessionis, et imperfectum vestrum viderunt oculi Dei. Propterea enim mandata sua mandavit custodiri nimis, ut videntes imperfectionem nostram deficere, et non posse implere, quod debet, fugiamus ad misericordiam, et qui non possumus in vestitu innocentiæ seu justitiæ, appareamus vestiti confessione. Confessio enim est pulcritudo in conspectu Domini, si tamen sit non oris tantum sed etiam totius hominis, ut omnia ossa nostra dicant; Domine, quis similis tibi, idque solius pacis intuitu et desiderio reconciliationis ad Deum.—In Epiphan. Dom., sermo 1. 1: Quisquis consolationem ignorat necessariam, superest, ut non habeat Dei gratiam. 3. Quid agerem audiens Dominum venientem? Numquid non fugerem, sicut Adam, nonne desperarem, audiens quia ille venit, cujus legem sic prævaricatus sum, cujus patientia sic abusus sum, cujus beneficio tam ingratus inventus sum? Quæ vero major consolatio poterat esse, quam in dulci vocabulo, in nomine consolatorio. Propterea et ipse dicit, quia non venit filius, ut judicet mundum, sed ut salvetur mundus per ipsum. Jam confidenter accedo, jam supplico fiducialiter. Quid enim timeam, quando salvator venit in domum meam? Ei soli peccavi, donatum erit, quidquid indulserit ille. Deus est, qui justificat; quis est, qui condemnet? Aut quis accusabit adversus electos Dei? Propterea gaudere nos oportet, quod in nostra venerit; nunc enim facilis ad indulgentiam erit.—In psalm. xci., sermo 16. 1: Speravit in me, liberabo eum… . Non dicit, dignus fuit, justus et rectus fuit, innocens manibus et mundo corde, propterea liberabo, protegam et exaudiam eum. Si enim hæc et similia diceret, quis non diffideret? Quis gloriabitur, castum se habere cor? Nunc autem apud te propitiatio est, et propter hanc legem tuam sustinui te, Domine. Dulcis lex, quæ meritum exauditionis in clamore constituit postulationis.—In Dominica vi. post Pentecosten, sermo 3. 4: Liberaliter agit Deus, ignoscit plenarie, ita ut propter fiduciam peccatorum sed pœnitentium, ubi abundavit delictum, soleat et gratia superabundare. 6. Tria considero, in quibus tota spes mea consistit, caritatem adoptionis, veritatem promissionis, potestatem redditionis. Murmuret jam, quantum voluerit, insipiens cogitatio mea dicens; quis es tu aut quanta est illa gloria quibusve meritis hanc obtinere speras? Et ego fiducialiter respondebo: scio cui credidi, et certus sum, quia in caritate nimia adoptavit me, quia verax in promissione, quia potens in exhibitione.—In festo omnium sanctorum, sermo 1. 11: Quid potest omnis justitia nostra coram Deo? Nonne juxta prophetam velut pannus menstruatæ reputabitur et si districte judicetur, injusta invenietur omnis justitia nostra? Propterea tota humilitate ad misericordiam recurramus, quæ sola potest salvare animas nostras. ↩

14. In vigil. nat. Dom., sermo 5. 5: Ante omnia fides quærenda est. Crede ergo te Deo, committe te ei, jacta in eum cogitatum tuum, et ipse te enutriet, ut fiducialiter dicas: deus sollicitus est mei. Is vere fidelis est, qui nec sibi credit, nec in se sperat, factus sibi tanquam vas perditum, sed sic perdens animam suam, ut in vitam æternam custodiat eam.—In Epiph. Dom., sermo 3. 7: Secure credamus in eum, secure credamus ei nos, cui nec potestas deest salvandi nos, cum sit verus Deus et Dei Filius, nec bona voluntas, cum sit tanquam unus ex nobis verus homo et hominis filius. —In festo annuntiationis Mariæ, sermo 3. 3: Sola spes apud te miserationis obtinet locum, nec oleum misericordiæ nisi in vase fiduciæ ponis… . Dicat quisque in pavore suo: vadam ad portas inferi, ut jam nonnisi in sola Dei misericordia respiremus. Hæc vera hominis fiducia, a se deficientis et innitentis Domino suo. Hæc, inquam, vera fiducia, cui misericordia non denegatur. ↩

15. In Cantica, sermo 43. 3: Pro acervo meritorum, quæ mihi deesse sciebam, hunc mihi fasciculum colligare volui collectum ex omnibus anxietatibus et amaritudinibus Domini mei.—Sermo 61. 3: Ubi tuta firmaque infirmis securitas et requies nisi in vulneribus salvatoris? ↩

16. Franciscus von Assisi. Ein Heiligenbild. 1856. See particularly p. 109, and following pages. ↩

17. Francisci Assisiatis et Antonii Paduani Opera, ed. de la Haye. Pedeponti 1739. Colloquium 4 (p. 71): In veritate dico vobis, domine episcope, nullum tantum mihi concessisse honorem, sicut tu hodie. Alii sanctum, alii beatum me in Dei operibus proclamant, mihi, non Deo, honorem et gloriam tribuentes; sed tu hodie pro tua sapientia vere me honorasti, Deo, quæ sua sunt, laudem et gloriam tribuens; pretiosum a vili separasti, Deo sapientiam et virtutem, mihi inscitiam et vilitatem appropriasti.—Coll. 11 (p. 73): Videor, ait, mihi maximus peccatorum. Cui cum frater diceret ex adverso: Hoc non potes, pater, sana conscientia dicere nec sentire, subjunxit: Si quantumcunque sceleratum hominem tanta fuisset Christus misericordia prosecutus, arbitror sane, quod multo, quam ego, Deo gratior esset. ↩

18. In the edition of his works cited above, Sermones dominicales et de tempore, pag. 2: Sanguis Christi clamat misericordiam. Securum, o homo, habes accessum ad Deum, ubi habes matrem ante filium, et filium ante patrem. Mater ostendit filio pectus et ubera, filius ostendit patri latus et vulnera. Nulla ergo ibi erit repulsa, ubi tot caritatis occurrunt insignia. Pag. 18:—Vere humilis non elevatur, cum de bonæ vitæ odore laudatur, verus (inquit Bernhardus) humilis vult vilis haberi et non humilis prædicari. ↩

19. Charles Schmidt: Études sur le mysticisme allemand au xiv. siècle (Paris 1847), pp. 142, 143. See Tauler’s Sermons (Augsburg, 1508), fol. 85: “ Worth never proceeds from man’s works or merits, but solely from the grace and merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, flowing at the same time from God.” —Fol. 124: “ Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof into my heart; but I come to that privilege through thy inexhaustible mercy, and the rich treasures of thy worthy merit. If I stand in need of repentance, love, and grace, I find it all in Thee, where virtue, desire, or longing and goodness are to be found.” ↩

20. Reformatoren vor der Reformation. II. Band. (1842) p. 253. ↩

21. e.g. Weingarten: Revolutionskirchen Englands, p. 2. ↩

22. In Luther’s preface to the complete edition of that work published in 1518. In Walch’s edition xiv. p. 204, the date 1516 is wrongly given. That is the date of the shorter preface, along with which Luther at first published only a portion of the book, under the title, “The Old and the New Man—what they are.” This preface is to be found in Walch, p. 207. Compare the preface, pp. x. xi. in Pfeiffer’s edition of the Theologie deutsch. (2d Ed. 1855). As for the above-mentioned declaration of Luther, considered in itself, we must distinguish between two different ways of learning from books—learning by appropriation, and learning by suggestion. As Luther did not appropriate the peculiar circle of thought developed in this book, his interest in it must be referred to the stimulus he derived from it. ↩

23. Dorner in the main coincides.—Hist. Prot. Theol. p. 215. ↩

24. I purposely refrain here from using the catchword Pelagianism, which I might perhaps be expected to use. The word certainly is very applicable to the nominalistic recognition of merita de congruo, but that is a theory to which no practice can directly adapt itself. In the Christian world of baptized persons merita de congruo could only occur in the contritio of those who had fallen from grace. Though an assumption apparently warranted by Duns, it has been disputed even by Biel, and has no formal recognition. The portion of the nominalistic theory which comes under consideration at this point is the assertion that Christ’s merit and the merita de condigno which thereby first became possible are each partially and both of them together the causes of salvation (p. 92). This however is not Pelagian, because grace is postulated for the idea of merit. ↩

25. Compare C. L. Wilibald. Grimm, De Joanne Staupitio, ejusque in sacrorum instaurationem merito. In Illgen’s Zeitschrift f. histor. Theol. 1837. Perhaps his predecessor in office as Vicar of the Augustinian order for Gemany, Andreas Proles, had some influence upon him. ↩

26. Staupitii Opera, ed Knaake, vol. i. pp. 106, 118. ↩

27. De prædestinationis exsecutione, in Christopher Scheurl’s translation; Sec. 34, 35, 36, as above, p. 145. ↩

28. Sec. 38, 40, 43, 52, as above, pp. 146-150. ↩

29. I naturally refrain from laying stress here upon the tractate of Staupitz, Von dem heiligen rechten christlichen Glauben. For it was published in 1525, after his death (ob. 28 Dec. 1524), and bears unmistakeable traces of Luther’s influence in the mode of apprehending the ideas of faith and of justification or redemption in Christ, as also in the inferior position given to the sacrament of penance in comparison with faith; although it was composed by Staupitz when he was Abbot of Saint Peter’s, in Salzburg, whither he had withdrawn in order to continue at peace with the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church. ↩

30. Reformatoren vor der Reformation, ii. p. 659. ↩

31. De magnitudine passionis, cap. 7. Opera, Amstelod. 1617. I may remark that Wessel was a nominalist in metaphysics indeed, but not in theology. As a theologian, moreover, he makes use not of the scholastic, but of the rhetorical form, which is well adapted to his tendency to a brilliant use of figures. It is of course impossible to attain to any fixed theological ideas by such a method, still Wessel also in this respect follows in the track of the realist tendencies of the Catholic doctrine. ↩

32. As above, i. p. 90. ↩

33. As above, i. pp. 324, 325. ↩

34. Girolamo Savonarola (1836), pp. 215, 269-281. ↩

35. It must be conceded that Savonarola also gives expression to the religious estimate of self, after the manner of Bernard, in his exposition of the 51st Psalm, which was recommended by Luther: “Quot justi, tot miserationes. Nullus gloriari potest in semetipso. Veniant omnes justi et interrogemus eos coram Deo, an sua virtute salvi facti sint? Certe omnes respondebunt, Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.” ↩

36. Herzog’s Realencyklopädie, xviii. p. 100. ↩

37. Geschichte der böhmischen Reformation, p. 388. ↩

38. Hymni ecclesiastici, præsertim qui Ambrosiani dicuntur. In Georg. Cassandri Operibus (Paris, 1616). / p. 177. Ob hoc redemtor quæsumus, / Ut probra nostra diluas, / Vitæ perennis commoda / Nobis benigne conferas. ↩

39. Compare Wimpina, Anacephalæosis hæresium ii. 9; Literæ pontificiæ Pauli III., de modo concionandi (by Reginald Poole) in Laemmer’s Die vortridentinisch-katholische Theologie, p. 163, 168. Compare also Gerhardi Confessio catholica, p. 1558, seq.,—but with discrimination. ↩

40. The task I am immediately occupied with prevents me from investigating specially this change I have indicated in the Church’s tone. Still I have not the slightest doubt that towards the beginning of the sixteenth century one could find, over and above the two theologians that have been named, several other orthodox Catholic divines who also revived the Augustinian tradition in this fashion. Even Erasmus belongs to this class. Accordingly, we must fix in some other way the value of Wessel and of Staupitz than by calling them forerunners of the Reformation, and even Reformers previous to the Reformation. The latter designation, in particular, is altogether to be set aside; for it is untrue. These men reformed nothing either in the doctrine or in the institutions of the Church. But neither ought they as forerunners of the Reformation to be separated from the other Augustinians and realists, to whom they are more closely allied than to the Reformers. ↩

41. De articulis religionis inter Catholicos et Protestantes controversis consultatio ad Ferdinandum I. et Maximilianum II. (1564.) In his collected Works, pp. 924, 925. ↩

42. Compare, for example, Apologia Conf. Aug. p. 61. “Scholastici secuti philosophos tantum docent justitiam rationis … quod ratio sine Spiritu sancto possit diligere Deum super omnia … ad hunc modum docent, homines mereri remissionem peccatorum, faciendo quod in se est,” p. 63. “Quod fingunt discrimen inter meritum congrui et meritum condigni, ludunt tantum, ne videantur aperte πελαγιανίζειν. Nam si Deus necessario (!) dat gratiam pro merito congrui, jam non est meritum congrui, sed meritum condigni.” This latter remark of Melanchthon at once shows that he has no understanding of the matter, for the Nominalists, in respect of both sorts of merit, deny any sort of necessity so far as God is concerned (p. 91). It is in the adoption (“faithful to the confession”) of these unhistorical assumptions, however, that the views of Protestant historians, reviewed above, have their origin, as if mediæval theologians at once separate themselves from the doctrine of the Catholic Church merely in virtue of the fact that they assign no value to meritum de congruo, and derive from grace everything that is good in man. Another scientifically inaccurate assertion of Melanchthon—connected with the previous one—is to be found in p. 175: “Adversarii dicunt peccatum ita remitti, quia attritus seu contritus elicit actum dilectionis Dei, per hunc actum meretur accipere remissionem peccatorum… . Præterea docent confidere, quod remissionem peccatorum consequamur propter contritionem et dilectionem.” On the one hand, even attritio as actus informis, presupposes grace; and, on the other, contritio, as being actus caritate formatus, presupposes gratia gratum faciens. In the progress from the first to the second grade, and even on the second grade itself, the idea of meritum is not at all resorted to. ↩

43. Agenda Coloniensis ecclesiæ (Colon. 1637), p. 108; Agenda sive Rituale Osnabrugense (Colon. 1653), p. 171. ↩