Annotatio CCXVII

”Come, my dove, in the clefts of the rock.” — Canticle 2:10, 14

Bernard, in homily 61 on the Canticle of Canticles, inserted into the exposition of this clause these words:¹ “My merit, therefore, [is] the mercy of the Lord: I am not plainly destitute of merit, so long as he [the Lord] shall not be [destitute] of mercies; and if the mercies of the Lord are many, I too am, nonetheless, abundant in merits. Shall I sing of my own justices? O Lord, I will be mindful of thy justice alone: for that is mine also — namely, thou hast been made unto me justice from God.”² John Calvin, in chapter 10 of his Institutes, while he strives to show that there are no merits of our good [works] before God, abuses this testimony; adding also that [saying] which was uttered by the same author in the fifteenth sermon on Psalm 90: “This is the whole merit of man, if he place his whole hope in him who has made the whole man safe,” etc.

But Bernard does not suffer himself to be so interpreted, whose plain definition concerning the merits of the pious thou hast in the 68th sermon on the Canticle of Canticles, to this effect:³ “It suffices,” he says, “to know, for [obtaining] merit, that merits do not suffice; but as, for merit, it is enough not to presume upon [one’s] merits, so to be destitute of merits is enough for [condemnation at the] judgment. Furthermore, none of the reborn infants is destitute of merits, but they have the merits of Christ — of which nevertheless they render themselves unworthy, if they, who ought to join their own merits [to Christ’s], have neglected [to do so]: which danger indeed is [only] of the adult age. Take care, therefore, to have merits; [and] when thou hast [them], know [them] to be given [to thee]. And thus thou hast escaped all danger of poverty and of presumption: for pernicious is the poverty and penury of merits, but presumption [is] the deceitful riches of the spirit; and therefore, ‘Give me neither riches nor poverty, O Lord,’ says the Wise Man.”⁴ These [are] Bernard’s words: from which it appears that he, in those [passages] which Calvin adduced, does not destroy nor condemn the merits of holy works, which are humbly done by the servants of God (God leading, and the Holy Spirit favoring), but [rather] admonishes the servants of God not so to swell up over their own virtues and merits as to think that they have them either from themselves, without the breathing of the divine Spirit, or that they are worthy, without the aid of heavenly grace, to merit anything, however small. Hither look the things thou hast above in the sayings of Augustine, Annotation 92.