By these precepts, He took away from man the dominion over one part of His creatures (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for instance), and rather willed that it should not be free. Having mentioned the adding of precepts, He next comes to man’s will towards God, and the things of God.
“If you are willing to keep the commandments, they shall preserve you,” etc.
From this place, then, ‘if you are willing,’ is where the question of Freewill begins. So that we may learn from the Preacher, that man is divided between two kingdoms. In the one kingdom, he is borne along by his own will and counsel, without any precepts or commandments from God: to wit, in the exercise of his relations to the inferior creatures. Here he reigns, and is lord, having been left in the hand of his own counsel. It is not that God so leaves him even here, as not to cooperate with Him in all things; but that He leaves him a free use of the creatures, according to his own will, not restricting him by laws or injunctions. It is as if you said, by way of comparison, ‘The Gospel has left us in the hand of our own counsel, to rule over the creatures, and to use them as we please; but Moses and the Pope have not left us in this counsel, but have restrained us by laws, and have rather subjected us to their wills.’
But in the other kingdom, man is not left in the hand of his own counsel, but is borne along and led by the will and counsel of God. So that, while in his own kingdom he is borne along by his own will, without the precepts of another; in the kingdom of God, he is borne along by the precepts of another, without his own will. And this is what the Preacher affirms, “He added precepts and commands. If you will,” etc. 315 [see fn]
SECT. 14. Ecclesiasticus at least does not decide for Freewill.
If these things are quite clear, then, we have proved that this passage from Ecclesiasticus makes against Freewill, not for it; as subjecting man to the precepts and will of God, and withdrawing him from his own will. But if they are not quite clear, I have at least made out that this passage cannot be brought to support Freewill, because it is capable of quite a different interpretation from theirs. For instance, as I just mentioned, our interpretation is so far from being absurd, that it is most sound, and consonant with the whole tenour of Scripture. Whereas theirs is repugnant to that testimony, and it is fetched from this single passage in contradiction to the whole volume besides. We therefore stand firm and without fear in our good sense of the words, which negates Freewill until they confirm their affirmative, harsh, and forced sense of them.
When the Preacher therefore says, “If you are willing to keep the commandments, and to maintain acceptable faith, they shall preserve you” — I do not see how Freewill is proved by these words. The verb is in the conjunctive mood (‘If you will’); which asserts nothing indicatively.316 Take an example or two. ‘If the devil is God, he is worthy to be worshipped,’ ‘If a donkey flies, it has wings,’ ‘If the will is free, grace is nothing,’ If the Preacher meant to assert the freedom of the will, he should have said, ‘Man can keep the commandments of God;’ or, ‘Man has power to keep the commandments,’
SECT. 15. What is meant by ‘If you will,’ etc.
But here Diatribe cavils that in saying, “If you will keep,” the Preacher intimates that there is a will in man both to keep, and not to keep —
‘for what meaning is there in saying to a man who has no will, ‘If you will’? Would it not be ridiculous to say to a man who is blind, ‘If you will see, you will find a treasure?’ Or, to a deaf man, ‘If you will hear, I will tell you a pretty story?’ This would be only laughing at their misery.
I answer that these are the arguments of human reason, which is prone to pour out a flood of such wise sayings. Now I have to dispute not only with the Preacher, but with human reason, about an inference. 317 That lady interprets the Scriptures of God by her own consequences and syllogisms, drawing them wherever she will. I will undertake my office willingly and with full confidence of success, because I know that she chatters nothing but what is foolish and absurd — and does this most of all, when she sets about showing her wisdom on sacred subjects.
Now, if I were to ask in the first place how the intimation is proved, or how it follows, that man has a will that is free — as often as it is said, ‘If you will,’ ‘if you will do,’ ‘if you will hear,’ — Diatribe will say, it is because the nature of words and the custom of speech among men seem to require so. She measures the things and words of God, then, by the things and usage of men. What can be more perverse than this, when the one sort is earthly, and the other heavenly? Thus she betrays her foolish self: how she thinks nothing but what is human, about God.
But what if I were to prove that the nature of words and the custom of speech, even among men, is not always such that it makes those persons objects of ridicule, who have no power to comply with the demand, as often as it is said to them,
‘If you will,’ if you will do,’ ‘if you will hear?’ How often do parents mock their children by bidding them to come to them, or to do this or that, for the mere purpose of making it appear how utterly incapable they are of doing so, and of forcing them to call upon the parent for his helping hand! How often does the faithful physician command his proud patient to do or to leave undone things which are either impossible, or noxious, that he may drive him to that knowledge of his disease, or of his weakness, through testing himself, to which he could not lead him by any other means! What is more frequent, or more common, than words of insult and provocation, if we would show either to friends or to enemies, what they can do, and what they cannot do? I mention these things, only by way of manifesting to human reason, how foolish Diatribe is in attaching her inferences to the Scriptures; and how blind she is, not to see that these inferences are not always realized, even in human words and actions.
Yet, if she but sees them fulfilled now and then, she quickly rushes forward precipitously, and pronounces that they take place generally, in all human and divine forms of speech. Thus she contrives to make a universal of a particular, as is the manner of her wisdom.
SECT. 16. Use of such forms of address.
Now, God deals with us as a father deals with his children, to show us our impotency of which we are ignorant; or as a faithful physician does to make our disease known to us; or he insults us as his enemies who proudly resist his counsel, proposing laws to us (which is the most convincing way of doing it), saying, ‘do, hear, keep;’ or, ‘if you hear, if you are willing, if you do.’ Will the following be a just inference from it? ‘So then, we can will freely, otherwise God is mocking us.’ Is this not rather the inference: ‘So then, God is testing us, whether we are friends or foes. If we are his friends, he may lead us to the knowledge of our impotency, by the law; or if we are proud enemies, then indeed he may truly and deservedly insult and deride us.’ 318
This is the reason God gives laws; as Paul teaches. 319 For human nature is so blind as not to know its own strength, or rather its own disease; and besides, it is so proud as to think that it knows and can do all things.
Now, God has no more effectual remedy for this pride and ignorance, than propounding his law, about which I will say more in its proper place. Let it suffice to have taken but a sip of the cup here, that I might confute this inference of foolish, carnal wisdom: ‘If you will — therefore the will is free,’ Diatribe dreams that man is sound and whole, just as he is in the sight of his fellow men, in mere human affairs. Hence, she cavils and says, ‘Man is mocked by such words as “if you will,” “if you will do,” “if you will hear,” unless his will is free,’ But Scripture declares man to be corrupt and captive; and not only so, but a proud despiser of God, and one who is ignorant of his corruption and captivity. So she plucks him by the sleeve, and endeavours to awaken him by such words as these, that he may own, even by sure experience, how incapable he is of any of these things.
SECT. 17. Diatribe is insincere in her inference.
But I