For, if you were even to concede that there is such a thing as merit, and added those usual similes and consequences of Reason — such as, that commandments are given in vain; that reward is promised in vain; that threatenings are held forth in vain, unless there is Freewill — if anything is proved by these arguments, I say, it is that Freewill, of herself, can do everything. For, if she cannot do everything for herself, that consequence of reason retains its place. ‘Therefore, it is vain to command, it is vain to promise, it is vain to hold out threatenings,’ Thus Diatribe continually disputes against herself, while opposing me. The truth, meanwhile, is that God alone works both merit and reward in us, by his Spirit. But he announces and declares each of these to the whole world, by his outward word. This is in order that his own power and glory, and our impotency and ignominy, may be proclaimed even among the ungodly, the unbelieving, and the ignorant — even though none but the godly understand that word with the heart, and keep it faithfully; the rest despise it.
SECT. 40. Apology for not considering all his pretended texts separately — Absurd cavil from Mat 7.16.
And now, it would be too tiresome to repeat the several imperative verbs which Diatribe enumerates out of the New Testament; always appending her own consequences, pretending that all these expressions are vain, superfluous, meaningless, absurd, ridiculous, and nothing at all, unless the Will is free. I have already declared, to a high degree of nauseating repetition, what an absolute nothing is made out by such expressions as these. If they prove anything, they prove an entire Freewill.
Now, this is nothing but a complete overturning of Diatribe, who undertook to prove such a Freewill as can do nothing good, and serves sin; but really proves a Freewill which can do everything — so continually ignorant and forgetful is she of her own self. They are mere cavils then, when she argues thus:
‘You shall know them by their fruits,’ says the Lord: by fruits he means works. He calls these works ours: but they are not ours, if all things are performed by necessity.’
What! Are those possessions not most rightly called ours, which it is true, we have not made ourselves, but which we have received from others? Why should those works not then be called ours, which God has given to us by the Spirit? Shall we not call Christ ours, because we have not made him, but only received him? On the other hand, if we say that we make all those things which are called ours, why then, we have made our own eyes for ourselves, we have made our own hands for ourselves, we have made our own feet for ourselves — unless we are forbidden to call our eyes, hands, and feet ours! Indeed, what do we have, which we have not received; as Paul says? 1Cor 4.7 Shall we say, then, that these possessions are either not ours, or they have been made by ourselves? But let it be, now, let it be that these fruits are called ours, because we have produced them — what then becomes of grace and the Spirit? For he does not say, ‘by their fruits, which are in some very small degree and portion theirs, you shall know them.’ 426 These, rather, are the ridiculous, superfluous, vain, meaningless sayings — indeed, a parcel of foolish and odious cavils — by which the sacred words of God are polluted and profaned.
SECT. 41. Luk 23.34 is against, not for Freewill.
Thus, too, that saying of Christ on the cross is sported with 427 : “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Here, when you expect a sentence that attaches 428 Freewill to the testimony just adduced, she again takes herself to her consequences. ‘How much more justly,’ she says, ‘would he have excused them by saying that they were those who did not have a free will, and could not do otherwise, even if they would!’ And yet, that sort of Freewill which can will nothing good, though it is the sort of Freewill in question, is not proved by this consequence. Rather, it is that sort of Freewill which can do everything; the sort which no one contends for, and which everyone denies, except the Pelagians.
But now, when Christ expressly says that they know not what they do, does he not at the same time testify that they cannot will good? For, how can you will what you do not know? Surely there can be no desire for an unknown thing. What can be more stoutly affirmed against Freewill, than it is such a perfect nullity in itself, that it is not only incapable of willing good, but of knowing how much evil it is doing, and even what ‘good’ is. Is there any obscurity in any word here? ‘They know not what they do.” What remains in Scripture, which may not prove Freewill, by Diatribe’s suggestion, when this most clear saying of Christ affirms the contrary to her? A man might just as easily say that Freewill is proved by that saying, “The earth was empty 429 and void;” or, “God rested on the seventh day:” and the like. Then the Scriptures will be ambiguous and obscure indeed! These sayings would mean all things, and mean nothing, in the same moment. But such an audacious handling of the word of God argues for a mind that is signally contemptuous both towards God, and towards man — which deserves no patience at all. 430
SECT. 42. Joh 1.12 is all for grace.
So again, that saying in John 1.12, “To them he gave power to become the sons of God,’ she takes in this way: ‘How can power be given to them, that they should become the sons of God, if there is no liberty in our will?’
This passage, also, is a cudgel 431 against Freewill, as is nearly the whole Gospel of John; yet this is adduced in support of it. See, I beg you, that John is not speaking of any work of man’s, whether great or small; but of the actual renewal and transmutation of the old man, who is a son of the devil; into the new man, who is a son of God. This man is simply passive (as they say), and does nothing, but is altogether a thing that is made. For John speaks of his being made: “to be made the sons of God.” This is by a power freely given to us by God. It is not by a power of Freewill which is natural to us. 432
But our Diatribe infers from this, that Freewill is of such a power as to make sons of God; or else she is prepared to conclude that this saying of John is ridiculous and meaningless. But who has ever extolled Freewill to such a height, as to give it the power of making sons of God — especially such a Freewill as can will nothing good. And this is the one which Diatribe has taken up to prove. 433 But let this pass with the rest of those consequences, so often repeated, by which, if anything is proved, it is nothing but what Diatribe denies: namely, that Freewill can do everything. What John means is this: that by Christ’s coming into the world, a power is given to all men through the Gospel (that Gospel by which grace is offered, and not by which work is demanded), which is magnificent in the extreme — even that power of becoming the sons of God, if they are willing to believe!
But this ‘being willing,’ this ‘believing in his name,’ — because it is a thing which Freewill never knew, and never thought of before, it is a thing which she is yet much further from being able to attain to, by her own powers. For how could reason imagine that faith in Jesus, the son of God and of man, is necessary, when she does not yet comprehend, nor can she believe, that there exists a person who is at the same time both God and man — even if the whole creation were to proclaim it with an audible voice. On the contrary, she is all the more offended by such preaching, as Paul testifies in 1Cor 1.18, 23. That is how far she is from being either willing or able to believe. 434
John therefore proclaims those riches of the kingdom of God, which are offered to the world by the Gospel, not by the virtues of Freewill. This intimates, at the same time, how few there are who receive them because, truly, Freewill resists the proposal. Through the dominion which Satan has over her, her power is nothing but to spurn the offer of grace, and of that Spirit 435 who would fulfil the law.
So exquisite is the force of her desire and endeavour to fulfil the law! But hereafter I will show more at large what a thunderbolt this text of John’s is against Freewill. Meanwhile, I am not a little indignant that passages which are so clear in their meaning, and so powerful in their opposition to Freewill, should be cited by Diatribe in her favour. Her dullness is such that she sees no difference between law words and words of promise. For having first of all
