Chapter 50.--Obedience Not Discouraged by Preaching God's Gifts.
Such doctors, and so great as these, when they say that there is nothing of which we may boast as if of our own which God has not given us, and that our very heart and our thoughts are not in our own power; and when they give the whole to God, and confess that from Him we receive that we are converted to Him in such wise as to continue,--that that which is good appears also to us to be good, and we wish for it,--that we honour God and receive Christ,--that from undevout people we are made devout and religious,--that we believe in the Trinity itself, and also confess with our voice what we believe:--certainly attribute all these things to God's grace, acknowledge them as God's gifts, and testify that they come to us from Him, and are not from ourselves. But will any one say that they in such wise confessed that grace of God as to venture to deny His foreknowledge, which not only learned but unlearned men also confess? Again, if they had so known that God gives these things that they were not ignorant that He foreknew that He would give them, and could not have been ignorant to whom He would give them: beyond a doubt they had known the predestination which, as preached by the apostles, we laboriously and diligently maintain against the modern heretics. Nor would it be with any manner of justice said, nevertheless, to them because they preach obedience, and fervently exhort, to the extent of the ability of each one, to its practice, "If you do not wish that the obedience to which you are stirring us up should grow cold in our heart, forbear to preach to us that grace of God by which you confess that God gives what you are exhorting us to do."
Chapter 51 [XX.]--Predestination Must Be Preached.
Wherefore, if both the apostles and the teachers of the Church who succeeded them and imitated them did both these things,--that is, both truly preached the grace of God which is not given according to our merits, and inculcated by wholesome precepts a pious obedience,--what is it which these people of our time think themselves rightly bound by the invincible force of truth to say, "Even if what is said of the predestination of God's benefits be true, yet it must not be preached to the people"? [3688] It must absolutely be preached, so that he who has ears to hear, may hear. And who has them if he has not received them from Him who says, "I will give them a heart to know me, and ears to hear?" [3689] Assuredly, he who has not received may reject; while, yet, he who receives may take and drink, may drink and live. For as piety must be preached, that, by him who has ears to hear, God may be rightly worshipped; modesty must be preached, that, by him who has ears to hear, no illicit act may be perpetrated by his fleshly nature; charity must be preached, that, by him who has ears to hear, God and his neighbours may be loved;--so also must be preached such a predestination of God's benefits that he who has ears to hear may glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.
[3688] In the Letters of Prosper and Hilary, printed among Augustin's Letters, Nos. 225 and 226.
[3689] Baruch ii. 31.
Chapter 52.--Previous Writings Anticipatively Refuted the Pelagian Heresy.
But in respect of their saying "that it was not necessary that the hearts of so many people of little intelligence should be disquieted by the uncertainty of this kind of disputation, since the catholic faith has been defended for so many years, with no less advantage, without this definition of predestination, as well against others as especially against the Pelagians, in so many books that have gone before, as well of catholics and others as our own;" [3690] --I much wonder that they should say this, and not observe--to say nothing of other writings in this place--that those very treatises of mine were both composed and published before the Pelagians had begun to appear; and that they do not see in how many passages of those treatises I was unawares cutting down a future Pelagian heresy, by preaching the grace by which God delivers us from evil errors and from our habits, without any preceding merits of ours,--doing this according to His gratuitous mercy. And this I began more fully to apprehend in that disputation which I wrote to Simplicianus, the bishop of the Church of Milan, of blessed memory, in the beginning of my episcopate, when, moreover, I both perceived and asserted that the beginning of faith is God's gift.
[3690] The Epistle of Hilary in Augustin's Letters, 226, ch. 8.