Annotatio CXCV

”Who crowneth thee in mercy and compassions.” — Psalm 102:4

The sentence of Augustine from the exposition of this little verse, Hermann Bodius, in the Collectanea, reckons among those by which the Lutherans impugn the merits of good works.¹ It is of this kind: “[We] who in ourselves are conquered, in him have conquered; therefore he crowns thee, because he crowns his own gifts, not thy merits. ‘I have labored more than all,’ says the Apostle; but see what he added: ‘Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.’”² And in the exposition of Psalm 98, upon that [verse], “Exalt the Lord our God,” he says: “God, who is about to crown in us not our merits, but his own gifts — how much ought he to be exalted by us? Exalt, therefore, the Lord our God.” And in the exposition of Psalm 88 he says: “When a man shall have seen that whatsoever good he has, he has not of himself, but of his God, he sees that all which is praised in him is not of his own merits, but of the mercy of God.” And on Psalm 139 he says: “The saints attribute nothing to their own merits: they attribute the whole to nothing but thy mercy, O God.” And on Psalm 144, expounding those words, “The Lord is merciful and compassionate,” etc., he says:³ “‘By grace ye are made safe’ — where thou hearest ‘grace,’ understand ‘freely’ [gratis]; if therefore freely, thou hast brought nothing, thou hast merited nothing: for if anything is rendered to merits, it is a wage, not grace”;⁴ and a little after: “The whole is of mercy; nowhere boast thy merits, because thy very merits are his gifts.” And in epistle 105, to Sixtus the presbyter: “When God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else than his own gifts.” And on John, tractate 3: “When, therefore, God bestows the reward of immortality, he crowns his own gifts, not thy merits.” And in the fifth book of the Fifty Homilies, homily 14: “We know nothing of thine, prepared by thyself for thyself, except evils; when, therefore, God crowns thy merits, he crowns nothing but his own gifts.”

Augustine repeats this same sentence in almost innumerable places, which — lest I be troublesome to the reader — I pass over. Yet not by these words, as the Lutheran heretics falsely pretend, does he condemn the merits of the faithful and of good men (for these he everywhere teaches, establishes, and defends,⁵ always carrying about that [saying] which he uttered in the sermon “On the Season” 162, saying: “God, for the merits of faith and of good works, will give to his faithful the kingdom of heaven”); but by these sayings he casts down the pride of the Pelagians, who boasted that by their own powers and labors — even without the aid of divine grace — they could merit and obtain the crown of eternal felicity. Against so insolent an arrogance, Augustine pronounces that God crowns in us not our merits, but his own gifts — so that by this manner of speaking he hints that human merits are to be considered in two ways:⁶ either inasmuch as they arise from the destitute powers of our nature, with none preceding and none accompanying [them] of the aid of divine grace — and these indeed are worthy of no crown, nor are they crowned in us by God, but enjoy only the empty name of merit; or inasmuch as they arise from the favor of the divine benignity and prevenient grace (we consenting), and are increased (we cooperating) — and these indeed are they which he esteems worthy of eternal rewards, and crowns in us. And that this is his own definition, he himself explains in epistle 105 to Sixtus the presbyter, in these words: “There is no merit of man before grace, whereby he might receive grace; since all our merit is wrought in us by nothing but grace, and since, when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else than his own gifts. For as, from the beginning of faith, we obtained mercy — not because we were faithful, but that we might be [so] — so in the end, which will be in life eternal, he will crown us, as it is written: ‘In mercy and compassions.’ Not in vain, therefore, is it sung to God: ‘And his mercy shall follow me.’⁷⁸ Whence also that very eternal life — which surely will be had at the end, without end, and is therefore rendered to preceding merits — nevertheless, because those same merits, to which it is rendered, are not prepared by us through our own sufficiency, but wrought in us through grace, is itself also called grace: for no other reason than that it is given freely — not because it is not given to merits, but because the very merits, to which it is given, are themselves also [given].” He expresses this same thing more lucidly in the book On Grace and Free Will, chapters 6 and 7, saying: “When the Pelagians say that this alone is the grace [given] not according to our merits — that by which sins are remitted to man — but that the [grace] which is given at the end, that is, eternal life, is rendered to our preceding merits: it must be answered to them: If, indeed, they so understood our merits as to acknowledge that these too are gifts of God, that opinion would not be to be reproved; but since they so preach human merits as to say that man has them of his own self, the Apostle most rightly answers: ‘For who distinguisheth thee? And what hast thou which thou hast not received?’⁹ To one thinking such things, it is most truly said: ‘God crowns his own gifts, not thy merits — if thy merits are of thyself; but if [they be] of God, [thy] good merits are [his] gifts: [and so] God crowns thy merits not as thy merits, but as his own gifts.’”