Chapter 20 [XIX.]--How a Man Makes a Good or a Bad Tree.
Now a man makes a good tree when he receives the grace of God. For it is not by himself that he makes himself good instead of evil; but it is of Him, and through Him, and in Him who is always good. And in order that he may not only be a good tree, but also bear good fruit, it is necessary for him to be assisted by the self-same grace, without which he can do nothing good. For God Himself cooperates in the production of fruit in good trees, when He both externally waters and tends them by the agency of His servants, and internally by Himself also gives the increase. [1829] A man, however, makes a corrupt tree when he makes himself corrupt, when he falls away from Him who is the unchanging good; for such a declension from Him is the origin of an evil will. Now this decline does not initiate some other corrupt nature, but it corrupts that which has been already created good. When this corruption, however, has been healed, no evil remains; for although nature no doubt had received an injury, yet nature was not itself a blemish. [1830]
[1829] 1 Cor. iii. 7.
[1830] [Here the phraseology contrasts vitium naturæ, with vitium natura.--W.]
Chapter 21 [XX.]--Love the Root of All Good Things; Cupidity, of All Evil Ones.
The "capacity," then, of which we speak is not (as he supposes) the one identical root both of good things and evil. For the love which is the root of good things is quite different from the cupidity which is the root of evil things--as different, indeed, as virtue is from vice. But without doubt this "capacity" is capable of either root: because a man is not only able to possess love, whereby the tree becomes a good one; but he is likewise able to have cupidity, which makes the tree evil. This human cupidity, however, which is a vice, has for its author man, or man's deceiver, but not man's Creator. It is indeed that "lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world." [1831] And who can be ignorant of the usage of the Scripture, which under the designation of "the world" is accustomed to describe those who inhabit the world?
[1831] 1 John ii. 16.
Chapter 22 [XXI.]--Love is a Good Will.
That love, however, which is a virtue, comes to us from God, not from ourselves, according to the testimony of Scripture, which says: "Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God: for God is love." [1832] It is on the principle of this love that one can best understand the passage, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;" [1833] as well as the sentence, "And he cannot sin." [1834] Because the love according to which we are born of God "doth not behave itself unseemly," and "thinketh no evil." [1835] Therefore, whenever a man sins, it is not according to love: but it is according to cupidity that he commits sin; and following such a disposition, he is not born of God. Because, as it has been already stated, "the capacity" of which we speak is capable of either root. When, therefore, the Scripture says, "Love is of God," or still more pointedly, "God is love;" when the Apostle John so very emphatically exclaims, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and be, the sons of God!" [1836] with what face can this writer, on hearing that "God is love," persist in maintaining his opinion, that we bare of God one only of those three, [1837] namely, "the capacity;" whereas it is of ourselves that we have "the good will" and "the good action?" As if, indeed, this good will were a different thing from that love which the Scripture so loudly proclaims to have come to us from God, and to have been given to us by the Father, that we might become His children.
[1832] 1 John iv. 7, 8.
[1833] 1 John iii. 9.
[1834] Same verse.
[1835] 1 Cor. xiii. 5.
[1836] 1 John iii. 1.
[1837] See above, ch. 4.