Cap. 4 Mem. 3: Triple proof — mercy, Christ the Head, viator vs damned

That possibility of having faith, which looks to any wayfarer, is confirmed by a triple argument. First, one drawn from Divine mercy. For God, as Prosper speaks, takes from no one (still constituted on the way) the path of correction, nor strips anyone of the possibility of good. Moreover he has fixed a law concerning granting remission of sins and eternal life to any penitent and believing person: I do not will the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live (Ezekiel 33:11). Therefore not only according to God’s absolute power, but according to ordinary power, any unbeliever and impious person can be gifted with true penitence and saving faith. Of the unbelieving Jews the Apostle truly says (Romans 11:23): God is able to graft them in again. And of all contumacious sinners it is rightly affirmed in God’s person (Revelation 2:21): I gave them time that they might repent, and they were unwilling to repent. He who has so granted human beings the whole span of this life that in any moment of it conversion to God can be saving for them, according to that most celebrated saying of the Prophet (Ezekiel 18:21–22), If the wicked shall have done penitence from all his sins, etc., I will not remember all his iniquities — the same has also reserved to himself that according to his ordained power he can infuse the grace of faith and penitence into anyone not yet damned to the underworld. Hence it is that we ought to put no one outside a possible state of salvation whom God’s patience allows to live.

Second, the same can be shown by an argument drawn from the respect of Christ the Head toward any of the wayfarers. For although a natural head does not have power of influencing except into members conjoined and united, yet this mystical Head can act upon separated members and pour into them vivifying grace by which they are united to him. In which sense Aquinas not inconveniently lays down (Part 3, question 8, article 1) that Christ is the head of all human beings, but according to diverse degrees. He is called Head principally of those who are united to him by glory, or by grace actually communicated; less principally of those who according to God’s ordinary law can still be united to him, whether that power is to be reduced into act or not: but of those who are in no potency to receive Christ’s influx he can in no way be called Head. Such, however, ought to be judged all and only the damned; because according to God’s promulgated will there is no redemption from the underworld. The power of having faith, then, as to anyone still constituted in this life, is founded in the most sufficient virtue of Christ the Head for influencing, and in the aforesaid mercy of God, who according to the common law willed the whole span of this life to lie open for receiving.

Last, that the condition of penitence and faith, under which Christ’s death is applicable to any human being unto salvation, is possible while we live here, is plain from the diverse condition of human beings while they are wayfarers and after they have come to the term. By the consent of all Theologians the will of any wayfarer is for this state flexible toward the good; just as, on the contrary, the will of the damned for that state is immoveably hardened in evil. However clear it is. That after this life the state of bad human beings is immobile and plainly immutable, no one doubts. For as Damascene rightly has it, book 2, chapter 4: What the fall is to angels, the same is death to human beings. If a tree shall have fallen, whether toward the south or toward the north, in whatever place it shall have fallen, there it will be (Ecclesiastes 11:3). On the contrary, the will is flexible and the malice of human beings constituted in this mortal life is mutable, so far that by God’s ordinary power any unbeliever can be illuminated, any impenitent converted — in a word, any impious person justified and saved. Whence that of the Apostle (2 Timothy 2:25–26): Those who are affected with a contrary mind are to be instructed with gentleness: if at some time God may give them that repenting they may acknowledge the truth and receive soundness of mind. He therefore hints that these things can still be done, and ought to be hoped for by us. Not unlike is that of Peter (2 Peter 3:9): The Lord is patient toward us, not willing that any perish, but that all tend to repentance. There is no other place for correcting morals than in this life, says Augustine, Letter 54. But in this life while we are, no time is either too late or too early for recovering the soul’s health, as Clement of Alexandria truly has it in the Stromata. Who is going to receive faith and penitence from God before he exits life, who is not going to receive, is a secret hanging from his will; but that the very power unto faith and penitence remains to the extreme period of this life — although such a power would indeed be in vain unless in some it were reduced to act; but that it is not reduced in all is to be referred partly to God’s secret will, partly to the manifest wickedness of human beings. Under both respects, from a capacity or power unto faith and salvation least reduced into act as to many, there follows for God a greater manifestation of his mercy toward the elect, a clearer manifestation of justice toward the impious unbelieving and impenitent: and therefore such a power is not granted them in vain. Alvarez well, On Helps, disputation 105: For some power not to be in vain, it is not required that it sometime be reduced to every act it can produce; but it suffices that it be reduced to some, or several. For just as no one would truly say that the power of perceiving the mathematical disciplines is given to human beings by nature in vain, although many capable of these disciplines do not find masters who actually instruct them in the same; so no one will have affirmed that this power of believing and repenting is present in vain to all wayfarers by God’s fixed law, although God does not effect in all that they believe, that they repent.