But see what Diatribe says here: ‘If you look at the infallible foreknowledge of God, Judas was necessarily to become a traitor; but Judas might have changed his will,’ Do you even know what you are saying, my Diatribe? To omit what has been already proved — that the will can only choose evil — how could Judas change his will, consistent with the infallible foreknowledge of God? Could he change the foreknowledge of God, and make it fallible? Here Diatribe gives in, deserts her standard, throws away her arms, and flees. She refers the discussion — as being none of hers — to those scholastic subtleties which distinguish between the necessity of a consequence and the necessity of a consequent. 545 This is the sort of quibble which she has no mind to pursue.
Doubtless, it is very prudent of you, having conducted your cause all the way into the midst of a crowded court 546 — when a pleader is most necessary — to turn your back and leave the business of replying and defining 547 to others. You should have acted on this counsel from the first, and altogether abstained from writing, according to that saying, ‘The man who does not know how to contend, abstains from the weapons of the field,’ 548 It was not expected of Erasmus to remove 549 this difficulty, ‘how God with certainty foreknows, and yet our actions are contingent.’ This difficulty was in the world long before Diatribe’s time. But it was expected that he would reply and define. However, being a rhetorician himself, while we know nothing about it, he calls in a rhetorical transition to his aid. Carrying us ignoramuses along with him — as if the matter in debate were one of no moment, and the whole discussion were a mere quirk and quibble — he dashes violently out of the midst of the crowd, wearing his crown of ivy and laurel. 550
But you have not gained your end by this stratagem, brother! There is no skill in rhetoric so great as to be able to deceive a sincere conscience. For the sting of conscience is mightier than eloquence with all her powers and figures. We will not suffer the rhetorician to pass on here to another topic, so that he may hide himself. It is not the place for this exhibition. The hinge of the several matters in dispute (and the head of the cause) is attacked here. It is here that Freewill is either extinguished, or gains a complete triumph. But instead of meeting this crisis, no sooner do you perceive your danger — or rather, perceive that the victory over Freewill is sure — than you pretend to see nothing but metaphysical subtleties in the question. Is this acting the part of a trusty theologian? Are you serious in the cause? How does it happen, then, that you both leave your hearers in suspense, and the discussion in a state of confusion and exasperation? 551 Still, you want to be thought of as having done your work honourably, and to have carried off the palm of victory. Such cunning and wiliness 552 may be endurable in secular causes; but it is most hateful and intolerable in theology, where simple and undisguised truth is the object of pursuit, that souls may be saved.
SECT. 23. Much joy to the Sophists and Diatribe in their necessity of a consequent.
The Sophists also have felt the invincible and insupportable force of this argument; they have therefore feigned this distinction between the necessity of a consequence, and of a consequent.
But it has been shown already how fruitless this distinction is. 553 They too, like yourself, are not aware what they say, and how much they admit against themselves. For if you allow the necessity of a consequence, Freewill is vanquished and laid prostrate; and it is not at all aided by the consequent’s being either necessary or contingent. What is it to me, that Freewill does what she does willingly and not by compulsion? It is enough for me that you concede, ‘It must necessarily be that Judas does what he does willingly; and that the event cannot be otherwise if God has so foreknown it.’ If God foreknows either that Judas will betray the Lord, or that he will change his will to betray him — whichever of the two He foreknows, it will necessarily come to pass. Else God would be mistaken in his foreknowledge and foretelling, which is impossible. The necessity of the consequence effects this: if God foreknows an event, that very event necessarily happens. In other words, Freewill is nothing. This necessity of the consequence is neither obscure, nor ambiguous. If the great doctors in all ages have even been blind, they must still be obliged to admit its existence, since it is so manifest and so certain as to be palpable. 554
But the necessity of the consequent, with which they comfort themselves, is a mere phantom; as the saying goes, it diametrically opposes the necessity of the consequence. For example, if I say ‘God foreknows that Judas will be a traitor; therefore it will certainly and infallibly come to pass that Judas is a traitor,’ this is the necessity of a consequence.
In opposition to this necessity, you console yourself by saying, ‘But since Judas may change his will to betray, there is therefore no necessity in the consequent’ [i.e., in what must follow]. I demand of you, how can these two assertions agree with each other: ‘Judas may not be willing to betray;’ and ‘it is necessary that Judas be willing to betray,’ Do they not directly contradict and oppose each other? You say, ‘He will not be compelled to betray against his will’ — How does this serve the purpose? You have been affirming something about the necessity of a consequent — that truly, the consequent is not rendered necessary by the necessity of the consequence; but you have affirmed nothing about the compulsion of the consequent. Your answer should have touched the necessity of the consequent; and instead, you produce an example which shows compulsion in the consequence. I ask one question and you reply to another. All this is the product of that half-asleep half-awake state of mind in which you do not perceive how perfectly inefficient that device is — the necessity of a consequent. 555
SECT. 24. The other admitted text is defended. Nothing to do with salvation. So Jerome had said.
So much for the first of the two passages, 556 It respects the induration of Pharaoh, and involves all texts of a like kind, amounting to a phalanx — and an invincible one at that.
Let us now examine the second, about Jacob and Esau. When they were not yet born, it was said “The elder shall serve the younger.” Diatribe evades this passage by saying, ‘It has nothing to do properly with the subject of man’s salvation. God may will that a man be a servant or a poor man, whether the man wills it or not, without being rejected from eternal salvation,’
See how many side-paths and holes of escape a slippery mind seeks, which is intent upon flying away from truth — but still, she does not quite accomplish her flight. Let us suppose, if you will, that this text does not pertain to man’s salvation (which I will speak about later). Is it to no purpose, then, that Paul adduces it? Would we make Paul ridiculous or absurd in the midst of so serious a discussion? However, this is a fancy of Jerome’s, who with abundant arrogance on his brow, while committing sacrilege with his mouth, has the audacity to affirm in more places than one, that those Scriptures which oppose Freewill in Paul’s writings, do not oppose Freewill in their proper places, 557 from which he quotes them. What is this, if not to say that in laying the foundations of Christian doctrine, Paul corrupts the divine Scriptures and beguiles the souls of the faithful, by a sentiment which is the coinage of his own brain, and which is imposed on the Scriptures by violence? Such is the honour, which the Spirit should receive, in the person of that holy and choice instrument of God, Paul!
Now, Jerome should be read with judgment. 558 And this saying of his is to be classed among the many which that gentleman (through his laziness in studying, and his dullness in understanding Scripture) has written impiously. Diatribe snaps up this very saying without any judgment, and does not deign to mitigate it as she might at least do, with a gloss of some sort. But she both judges and qualifies the Scriptures by this saying, as an oracle which precludes all doubt. Thus it
