Annotatio CLXVI

”My lots are in thy hands,” etc. — Psalm 30:16

Augustine, in the second exposition on this psalm, when he discoursed concerning the lots here commemorated by David, seemed to approve the use of lots,¹ when he says: “A lot is not something evil, but a thing which, in human doubt, indicates the divine will: for the Apostles too cast lots, when Judas, having betrayed the Lord, perished, and the lot fell upon Matthias.”² To the same opinion he subscribes in the epistle to Honoratus, thus speaking: “If among the ministers of God there be a dispute — [as to] which of them should remain in the time of persecution, lest by the flight of all the Church be deserted, and which should flee — if this dispute cannot otherwise be terminated, as far as it seems to me, which should remain and which should flee are to be chosen by lot.” And in the first book On Christian Doctrine, confirming this same thing, he says: “If something abounded which ought to be given to those who did not have [it], and it could not be given to two, if perhaps two occur to thee of whom neither excelled the other either in indigence or in some urgent necessity, thou wouldst do nothing more just than to choose by lot to whom must be given that which cannot be given to both.”

There are those who think that a decree of Pope Leo III is opposed to these sayings of Augustine — [namely] that which, in the epistle to the bishops of Britain, is written in the Decrees of the pontiffs, cause 26, question 5: “Lots, by which you decide all things in your provinces — which the Fathers condemned — we decree to be nothing other than divinations and sorceries. Wherefore we wish them altogether to be condemned, and no longer to be named among Christians; and, lest they be practised, we forbid [them] by the interdict of anathema.” St. Thomas, in the Second [part] of the Second, question 95, article 8, settling a controversy of this kind, shows that by Leo’s decree those lots are not forbidden which Augustine approved — namely, those which are treated piously and religiously³ — but those which are wont to be exercised superstitiously and impiously, those five conditions being spurned which the pious exercise of lots requires.⁴ Of these, the first is, that the division or consultation of the proposed matter be looked for from God alone, the director of lots. The second, that lots be not sought except when necessity compels. The third, that they be not attempted except when prayers to God have first been sent up. The fourth, that we abuse not divine oracles for the inquisition of lots. The fifth, that we use not lots in ecclesiastical elections, which ought to be done by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit alone. For although once Matthias was chosen by lots,⁵ now — the fullness of the Spirit being poured out — it ought no longer to be permitted; because what was permitted before the effusion of the Holy Spirit was [done] while the splendor of the evangelical light had not yet flashed forth.