John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion

X. And he moves the will, not according to the system maintained and believed for many ages, in such a manner that it would afterwards be at our option either to obey the impulse or to resist it, but by an efficacious influence. The observation, therefore, so frequently repeated by Chrysostom, that “Whom God draws, he draws willing,” we are obliged to reject, being an insinuation that God only waits for us with his hand extended, if we choose to accept his assistance. We grant that such was the primitive condition of man during his state of integrity, that he could incline to the one side or the other; but since Adam has taught us by his own example how miserable free will is, unless God give us both will and power, what will become of us if he impart his grace to us in that small proportion? Nay, we obscure and diminish his grace by our ingratitude. For the Apostle does not teach that the grace of a good will is offered to us for our acceptance, but that he “worketh in us to will;” which is equivalent to saying, that the Lord, by his Spirit, directs, inclines, and governs our heart, and reigns in it as in his own possession. Nor does he promise by Ezekiel that he will give to the elect a new spirit, only that they may be able to walk, but that they may actually walk, in his precepts.644 Nor can the declaration of Christ, “Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me,”645 be understood in any other sense than as a proof of the positive efficacy of Divine grace; as Augustine also contends. This grace the Lord deigns not to give to any person promiscuously, according to the observation commonly attributed, if I mistake not, to Occam, that it is denied to no man who does what he can. Men are to be taught, indeed, that the Divine benignity is free to all who seek it, without any exception; but since none begin to seek it, but those who have been inspired by heavenly grace, not even this diminutive portion ought to be taken from his praise. This is the privilege of the elect, that, being regenerated by the Spirit of God, they are led and governed by his direction. Wherefore Augustine as justly ridicules those who arrogate to themselves any part of a good volition, as he reprehends others, who suppose that to be given promiscuously to all, which is the special evidence of gratuitous election. “Nature,” says he, “is common to all men, but not grace.” He calls it “a transparent subtlety, which shines merely with vanity, when that is extended generally to all, which God confers on whom he chooses.” But elsewhere, “How have you come? by believing. Be afraid, lest while you arrogate to yourself the discovery of the way of righteousness, you perish from the way of righteousness. I am come, you say, by free will; I am come through my own choice. Why are you inflated with pride? Will you know that this also is given to you? Hear him proclaiming, ‘No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.’ ”646 And it incontrovertibly follows, from the words of John, that the hearts of the pious are divinely governed with such effect, that they follow with an affection which nothing can alter. “Whosoever is born of God,” he says, “cannot sin; for his seed remaineth in him.”647 For we see that the neutral, inefficacious impulse imagined by the sophists, which every one would be at liberty to obey or resist, is evidently excluded, where it is asserted that God gives a constancy that is effectual to perseverance.

XI. Concerning perseverance there would have been no doubt that it ought to be esteemed the gratuitous gift of God, had it not been for the prevalence of a pestilent error, that it is dispensed according to the merit of men, in proportion to the gratitude which each person has discovered for the grace bestowed on him. But as that opinion arose from the supposition that it was at our own option to reject or accept the offered grace of God, this notion being exploded, the other falls of course. Though here is a double error; for beside teaching that our gratitude for the grace first bestowed on us, and our legitimate use of that grace, are remunerated by subsequent blessings, they add also, that now grace does not operate alone in us, but only coöperates with us. On the first point, we must admit that the Lord, while he daily enriches and loads his servants with new communications of his grace, perceiving the work which he has begun in them grateful and acceptable, discovers something in them which he blesses with still greater degrees of grace. And this is implied in the following declarations: “Unto every one that hath, shall be given.” And, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.”648 But here two errors must be avoided; the legitimate use of the grace first bestowed must not be said to be rewarded with subsequent degrees of grace, as though man, by his own industry, rendered the grace of God efficacious; nor must it be accounted a remuneration in such a sense as to cease to be esteemed the free favour of God. I grant, then, that this Divine benediction is to be expected by the faithful, that the better they have used the former measures of grace, they shall afterwards be enriched with proportionably greater degrees of it. But I assert that this use also is from the Lord, and that this remuneration proceeds from his gratuitous benevolence. They are equally awkward and unhappy in their use of the trite distinction of operating and coöperating grace. Augustine has used it indeed, but softens it by a suitable definition; that God in coöperating completes what in operating he begins, and that it is the same grace, but derives its name from the different mode of its efficiency. Whence it follows, that he makes no partition of the work between God and us, as though there were a mutual concurrence from the respective exertions of each; but that he only designates the multiplication of grace. To the same purpose is what he elsewhere asserts, that the good will of man precedes many of the gifts of God, but is itself one of their number. Whence it follows, that he leaves nothing for it to arrogate to itself. This is also particularly expressed by Paul. For having said that “it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do,”649 he immediately adds, that he does both “of his own good pleasure,” signifying by this expression that these are acts of gratuitous benignity. Now, to their wonted assertion, that after we have admitted the first grace, our own endeavours coöperate with the grace which follows, I reply, if they mean that, after having been once subdued by the Divine power to the obedience of righteousness, we voluntarily advance, and are disposed to follow the guidance of grace, I make no objection. For it is very certain, that where the grace of God reigns, there is such a promptitude of obedience. But whence does this arise but from the Spirit of God, who, uniformly consistent with himself, cherishes and strengthens to a constancy of perseverance that disposition of obedience which he first originated? But if they mean that man derives from himself an ability to coöperate with the grace of God, they are involved in a most pestilent error.

XII. And to this purpose they falsely and ignorantly pervert that observation of the Apostle, “I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”650 For they understand it in this manner; that because his preference of himself to all others might appear rather too arrogant, he corrects it by referring the praise to the grace of God; but yet so as to denominate himself a coöperator with grace. It is surprising that so many men, not otherwise erroneous, have stumbled at this imaginary difficulty. For the Apostle does not say that the grace of God laboured with him, to make himself a partner in the labour; but rather by that correction ascribes the whole praise of the labour to grace alone. “It is not I,” says he, “that have laboured, but the grace of God which was with me.” They have been deceived by an ambiguity of expression; but still more by a preposterous translation, in which the force of the Greek article is omitted. For if you translate it literally, he says, not that grace was coöperative with him, but that the grace which was with him was the author of all. And the same is maintained by Augustine, though briefly, yet without obscurity, when he thus expresses himself: “The good will of man precedes many of the gifts of God, but not all. But of those which it precedes it is itself one.” Then follows this reason; because it is written, “The God of my mercy shall prevent me.”651 And, “Mercy shall follow me.”652 It prevents the unwilling, that he may will; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. With this agrees Bernard, who introduces the Church, saying, “Draw me unwilling, to make me willing; draw me inactive, to make me run.”