6. Most distinct, and fraught with the gravest practical results, was the further development of Scholasticism as regards the doctrine of justification and the meritorious acquirement of eternal life. But how many germs tending to develop into the Pelagian deterioration of these doctrines had already been deposited in his system by Thomas himself? I will not repeat here what must have already come clearly to view above in the account of the Thomist doctrine of grace. The most manifest outcome of the further development in Scotism consists in these things: (1) that the decisive effect of "prevenient grace became more and more a mere assertion, or, say, a form of speech-" co-operating grace" is the only intelligible grace-(2) that what, for Thomas, was "meritum ex congruo" became "meritum ex condigno," while the "merita ex congruo" were seen in impulses and acts which Thomas had not placed under the point of view of merit at all, and (3) that, as a parallel to the meritoriousness of attritio, the meritoriousness of" fides informis," of the mere obedience of faith, became more highly estimated. In this point the corruption was perhaps greatest; for the fides implicita, the mere self-surrender, now became in a sense a fundamental dogmatic principle.1

According to Scotus, the man who does not possess the habit of grace (habitus gratiæ), who therefore is not in union. with God, and hence can do nothing really meritorious to earn eternal life, must not be held as having no power to conform his conduct to the divine commands. He can still always fulfil these commands (otherwise God would require of him something impossible, and would be partial were He not to save all), and He must fulfil them; for he must prepare himself for the first grace. As it is a natural duty to love God beyond everyAugustine; but Werner has an interest in separating Bradwardine as far as possible from Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas, because his doctrine led to Wyclif, and to that Augustinianism which Catholic theology no longer tolerates, though, as a fact, it is the genuine Augustinianism. Yet neither can these theologians, on the other hand, make use of the pure Nominalism of Occam. Hence Bradwardine is recognised, so far as he became "an involuntary witness (?) as it were, for the necessity of a restoration of the ecclesiastical Scholasticism on a Thomist basis."

1 In germ the fides implicita was contained from the beginning in the Western system as a factor to which religious value was attributed. But only in Nominalism did this germ open into blossom.

thing, it is also a duty that can be fulfilled; accordingly, even the natural righteousness of heathen and sinners is not without connection with the supernatural virtues; indeed, it cannot at all be proved that a habit of love produced by supernatural grace is always necessary in order to love God above all; this rather is simply an ecclesiastical tenet. Before the Fall at least all this held good, and it can be proved, indeed, from Aristotle (!) that it holds good also after the Fall. It is with this in view that Scotus' doctrines of grace and of merit must be understood. In point of fact, merit always precedes grace with him, that is to say, first the merit de congruo, then the merit de condigno; the former entirely neutralises the thought of

1 See Werner I., p. 418 ff. In Sentent. II., Dist. 28, Q. 1, Question: "How can God forgive guilt without giving grace? videretur enim esse mutatio in deo, si non ponatur in ipso justificato. Potest illa opinio confirmari per hoc, quod illud præceptum Diliges dominum deum, etc.,' est primum, a quo tota lex pendet et prophetæ. Ad actum igitur hujus præcepti aliquando eliciendum (actus elicitus dilectionis, rationis) tenetur voluntas ; ita quod non potest esse semper omissio actus hujus præcepti sine peccato mortali. Quodcumque autem voluntas actum hujus præcepti exsequitur, licet informis, et disponit se de congruo ad gratiam gratificantem sibi oblatam, vel resistet et peccabit mortaliter, vel consentiet et justificabitur." In the following way the Augustinian position that meritum is the munus dei is justified (Dist. 17, Q. I in Resol.): "in actu meritorio duo sunt consideranda. Primum illud quod præcedit rationem meritorii, in quo includitur substantia et intentio actus ac rectitudo moralis. Secundum est ratio meritorii, quod est esse acceptum a divina voluntate, aut acceptabile, sive dignum acceptari ad præmium æternum. Quantum ad primum, potentia est causa prima et principalis, et habitus causa secunda, cum potentia utatur habitu, non e converso; alias habens semel gratiam nunquam posset peccare, cum causa secunda semper sequatur motionem causæ primæ, nec possit movere ad oppositum illius, ad quod causa prima inclinat. Sed accipiendo actum in quantum est meritorius talis conditio ei convenit principaliter ab habitu et minus principaliter a voluntate. Magis siquidem actus acceptatur ut dignus præmio, quia est elicitus a caritate, quam quia est a voluntate libere elicitus, quamvis utrumque necessario requiratur Actus meritorius est in potestate hominis supposita generali influentia, si habuerit liberi arbitrii usum et gratiam, sed completio in ratione meriti non est in potestate hominis nisi dispositive, sic tamen dispositive quod ex dispositione divina nobis revelata "; observe here the yes and no which comes out in these distinctions. Consequently Bradwardine was right in fixing down the following errors in the reigning Scholasticism: (1) While denying that the meritum is causa principalis doni gratiæ, it asserts that it is causa sine qua non; (2) while denying that man can of himself merit saving grace, it asserts that he can prepare himself for it in a way required of him, and that God then gives His grace, because even in naturalibus the forma is at once given to the materia disposita; (3) while denying that man can, strictly speaking, initiate the saving process, it asserts that he consents

prevenient grace, the latter cancels the decisive significance of co-operating grace. Everywhere in words, by means of extremely forced distinctions, Augustinianism is defended, but in reality it is discarded. The position that was not disputed even by Thomas and Augustine, that we are not justified unwillingly (inviti), receives from Nominalism a Pelagian interpretation, and the other position, that eternal life is the reward for the merits one acquires on the basis of infused grace, is so understood that the accent falls on the will, and not on the merit of Christ. The divine factor really appears only in the "acceptance" (acceptatio), which, as it dominates the whole relation between God and man and is arbitrary, does not allow merits in the strictest (necessary) sense to be spoken of. The Nominalist doctrine is not simple moralism, only in so far as the doctrine of God does not admit in any case of a strict moralism. This comes out most plainly in Occam, who, indeed, taken altogether, presents the paradoxical spectacle of a strongly pronounced religious nature finding refuge simply in the arbitrary will of God. It is reliance on this arbitrary will alone that frees him from Nihilism, and the same applies to the greatest theologians of the period of the Reform Councils, till Nicolas of Cusa brought about a change. Faith, in order to maintain itself, found no other means of deliverance from the inrushing floods of world-knowledge than the plank of the divine arbitrariness, to which it clung with intense eagerness. These theologians were still no moralists—they merely appear such to and follows ex proprüs viribus; (4) it asserts that man merits divine grace ex congruo (c. Pelag. 39), "et quia iste error est famosior ceteris his diebus, et nimis multi per ipsum in Pelagianum præcipitium dilabuntur, necessarium videtur ipsum diligentiori examine perscrutari." The situation at the beginning of the sixteenth century is excellently described by Ritschl thus (I., p. 138): "The state of things in respect of public doctrine which the Reformation found existing was not apprehended and represented by the two sides with historical precision and justice. The theological opponents of the Reformation, who were exclusively Realists, entirely ignore the fact, that for a century and a half the Nominalist School had maintained the Pelagian doctrine with regard to merita de congruo, and had over-rated the merita de condigno as compared with the merit of Christ, that as a School they had won equal public rights with the Realists, and even in respect of science and practice had exercised a far-reaching influence on the latter. The Reformers on the other hand directed their reproaches and charges of Pelagianism, which should have applied only to the Nominalist tradition, against Scholasticism in general."

"According

us; it was only the Socinians who became that. to Occam the necessity of supernatural habits (habitus) for the obtaining of eternal life cannot be proved on grounds of reason. What alone could support the proof would be, that the acts of faith, love, and hope corresponding to these habits are not possible without their supernatural habits; this, however, cannot be proved. A heathen living among Christians can come to hold the articles of the Christian faith as true, on grounds of purely natural conviction; a philosophically trained heathen can live according to the conviction, acquired in a natural way, that God, who is more excellent than all else, must be loved above all else. The acts of faith, hope, and love performed by such men originate, not from infused, but from acquired habits, while these latter can exist even among Christians, and really do exist where there is a certain height of moral and intellectual development. The necessity of supernatural habits is established solely by the authority of traditional Church doctrine. Thus then as regards the necessity of supernatural habits, we see Occam arriving at the most extreme opposition to the necessity of supernatural habits that is possible within the limits of Church faith." (?!) So Werner.1 That here there is still always a keeping within the limits of ecclesiastical faith is an instructive assertion of the modern Catholic theologian. The truth is, that the displacement of "merits" is here carried so far, that the distinction between merita ex congruo and merita ex condigno is entirely neutralised; man can acquire for himself in the state of nature merita de condigno; but God has willed, nevertheless, the necessity of a supernatural habitus and has appointed the corresponding institutions. Now although many theologians, such as Occam himself, might feel their religious conscience quieted by the reflection that God's arbitrary will is for us His mercy, yet the only general effect possible from this kind of theology-especially when we recall the attritio and the 1 II., p. 339 f.

2 The Catholic precautionary position lies simply in this, that God need give the vita æterna to no one at all, but that that life is in every case an arbitrary gift, the source of which is an ordained arrangement. This precautionary position, however, has nothing to do with the question about sin and guilt, but originates in the general doctrine of God.

indulgences, was that there should be recognised in good works the instrumental causes (causæ instrumentales) for the reception of eternal life, that these good works, moreover, should be judged to be meritorious even in their minimised form, and that, finally, self-subjection to the revelation taught by the Church should be held to be a sufficient good motive (bonus motus), which is so completed by the Sacraments that it imparts worthiness. In this way Nominalism was understood even by the earnest Augustinians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They saw in it a denial of the grace of God in Christ, and they did not let themselves be led astray from this judgment by the most acute distinctions of the Nominalists: "In vain is much said in the way of repudiation; what the other hears in everything is only a No."

Perhaps the plainest evidence of the decline of an inwardly grounded doctrine of salvation and of the growing attachment of value to creaturely goodness in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, is the doctrine of Mary, as embracing both the doctrine of her immaculate conception and the doctrine of her co-operation in the work of redemption.1

I. We have seen above (Vol. V., p. 235) that even Augustine had doubts as to whether Mary was subject to the general law of sin, and Paschasius Radbertus already knows that Mary was sanctified in the womb. Anselm, certainly, who on this point was more Augustinian than Augustine, had distinctly rejected the immaculate conception (Cur deus homo II. 16); but a few years after his death we meet with a festival in Lyons (1140) in honour of the immaculate conception of Mary, which proves how

The Pelagian motives underlying the doctrine of Mary are pretty much concealed in Scholasticism, but they are clearly apparent on closer inspection. The treatment,, moreover, of the doctrine of the human soul of Christ by Scotus and the Scotists is also a beautiful demonstration of their Pelagianism, but the description here of this complicated line of doctrinal development would take us too far; see Werner I., p. 427 ff.; II., p. 330 ff. What alone reconciles us in the marialogy is the observing that pious faith allows itself utterances about the relationship of Mary to God and Christ which it does not venture to make about its own relationship. In this sensethough it appears paradoxical-there is much that is evangelical in the doctrine of Mary. It would be an interesting task to prove this from the doctrine of Mary as taught by the Schoolmen individually.