Liber Octo Quaestionum ad Maximilianum Caesarem

A Book of Eight Questions to Emperor Maximilian

Trithemius, Johannes

The Book of Eight Questions addressed to Emperor Maximilian, by Johannes Trithemius, abbot of St. James at Wurzburg, formerly of Sponheim.

[unclear]

[unknown]

[unclear]

P. lat. 1239 4° Trithemius. [unclear]

[blank page]

Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Saint James at Würzburg, formerly of Sponheim: The Book of Eight Questions to Emperor Maximilian.

With the privilege of the imperial majesty: that it not be printed again in his kingdom, empire, and lands, nor copies printed elsewhere sold there, within ten years, under the penalties expressed in the privilege, namely ten marks of pure gold and the loss of all those books, etc.

Epigram of Richard Sbrulius of Friuli.

Who would deny that God is the parent of heaven and earth? No one is so savage as to deny that there is a God. God himself is worshipped everywhere throughout the whole world; he is sought by a different path, yet he is the same. The barbarian worships him as one who orders all things by fixed law; he denies incense to the holy Son and to the Spirit. The Hebrew boasts that he holds the true doctrines, and, with Moses as his leader, thinks himself the people of God. But the people of Christ, who took their name from his name, steadfastly sings that God is triune. Maximilian, greatest, who presides over the empire, continually aids the cause and honor of Christ. He asks, as it is fitting for an august king to ask such things, why the highest God permits there to be so many sects; why he does not present himself equally to all mortals; why he wished many things to lie hidden under hard signs. Father Trithemius sets forth everything to the king in order, that leader and ornament of the hooded flock. Whoever you are who used to doubt concerning the holy faith, read these things; soon you will be a sure pupil of Christ.

To the most serene and most unconquered lord of the world, Emperor Maximilian: Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Peapolitanus, The Book of Eight Questions. In the name of Christ begins the book of the monastery of Benedictbeuern.

I have obeyed your commands, most unconquered Emperor Maximilian, and those eight questions which you formerly proposed to me, when I had been summoned to Your Highness in the castle of Boppard, I have resolved with what brevity I could and set down in this form of a little book.

You wished, however, if I remember correctly, that, so far as possible in their solution, I should follow the path of nature, on account of those who yield less readily to belief. Yet this did not seem possible to me in all matters, because the subject matter of the questions in many places rested upon theological rather than natural principles. For although the Christian religion, among all the sects of mortals, is held to be nearer and more conformable to the laws of nature, nevertheless the principal articles of our faith are not all demonstrable according to the common path of nature. We believe that this was necessarily done so that faith might have a place and firm belief might not lack its own merit.

Therefore, entering upon a middle path of disputation, as far as my powers allowed and by command, I have used partly nature and partly also the testimony of the divine Scriptures. For truly, the things which it is fitting for us to believe are not to be rashly examined by human arguments, since, as Saint Gregory says, faith has no merit when human reason supplies proof for it. Therefore, with fear of God and reverence

of our undefiled Christian religion, I resolved to answer the questions proposed in such a way that I would depart from the definitions of the Roman Church neither in jest nor in earnest. Therefore whatever I have ever written or shall write, I wish all of it to be subject to its determination and judgment.

On Faith and Understanding, the First Question

Question First

The first question of your most serene majesty was this: Why did the all-good God wish to be believed by mortals rather than to be known and understood, namely in that mode of knowledge and understanding by which he is known and understood by the holy angels?

I remember that, when this question was put before your most sacred majesty, I answered as follows. Almighty God, who is without beginning, pure, everlasting, and unchangeable intellect, existing above every position knowable to us and far more perfect than infinite perfections, by his most wise will created from nothing at the beginning two intellects, namely the angelic and the human. The angelic intellect, at the beginning of its creation, was made in act with respect to all knowable things, and it knew all things. The human intellect, however, at first consists in potency with respect to all things, but is ignorant of all things. Yet in the end, through many continual upward actions, it will become like the angelic, knowing both God and all things that pertain to the knowledge of the promised knowledge and understanding.

The angelic and human intellects differ as any two opposites do, namely act and potency, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, habit and privation, beginning and end, immobile and mobile, substance and accident, truth and likeness, nature and art, health and infirmity, whole and part. For the angelic intellect is as act, light, knowledge, habit, beginning, immobile, immediate, simple substance, truth, nature, and whole. The human intellect, however, is as potency, darkness, ignorance, privation, end, mobile, mediated, composite, accident, likeness, art, and part.

Hence whatever things belong to the angelic intellect from the beginning, these same things belong to the human intellect at the end, after it has laid aside the burden of flesh; for just as the beginning perfects the angelic intellect by nature, so the end, by art, after many exercises, at last raises the human intellect upward. Therefore between these two intellects there is great inequality from the beginning; nevertheless in the end they are at last made equal, when the human intellect will be as great by art as the angelic had previously been by nature.

Hence it is clear that the angelic intellect, as soon as it was created, from the beginning, without any action or motion of its own, knew by nature, immovably and substantially, all things that it can understand, and as a creature became in an instant full and perfect with the knowledge of all things. But since the human intellect was created in ignorance and privation of all things, and was temporally destined for a body for its own exercise, it must by continual action, motion, and art come to knowledge of God and of all things. The end will at last make it equal to the angelic intellect, changing its potency into act and bringing it from the merely potential and possible into essence; from empty it will make it full, from imperfect perfect, from deprived possessing, from dark luminous, from nocturnal diurnal, from lunar solar, from earthly heavenly. This cannot happen while the mind is bound in the body, as the holy Christ-loving Paul says: As long as we are in the flesh, we are pilgrims away from the Lord.

To know God belongs to a pure, simple, and perfect intellect. But the human intellect, as long as it dwells in the body, is impure, mixed, unstable, and imperfect; for this reason it is ignorant of the knowledge of God, namely of that highest thing among things. But the object of each intellect, namely both the human and the angelic, is the same: God, the supreme and single good of all things, toward which [unclear]; God, the single principle of things, toward which [unclear]. with a natural inclination toward cognition. But if the angelic intellect is compared with the human, it is as nature is to art, and as intellect simply speaking is to reason, which is closely joined to the principles of the disciplines, while reason proceeds discursively from principles to conclusions. Hence it is clear that the angelic intellect apprehends its proper object immovably; toward that object the human intellect, through the angelic medium, after many exercises of itself, as has been said, at last prepares an ascent for itself by reasoning. But the human intellect is separated, by the medium of angelic cognition, from the perfection of its natural object, and therefore is necessarily mobile, returning through that medium to its own principle. For every motion is made from one extreme through a middle to an extreme; but where there is no middle, the extremes are already immediate and proximate, and for this reason immobile. But the human intellect, placed as it were in a dark prison so long as it is held in the body, is moved by sense and reason toward understanding, although very confusedly and imperfectly; and for that reason it admits between itself and God the medium that we have called angelic, while it bears the body as the very great impediment to its destined perfection. As a certain lover of wisdom said: The corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation depresses the sense that thinks many things. Therefore it was altogether necessary for us to believe in God rather than to know or understand him, because it is utterly impossible for that super-divine and uncircumscribable majesty to be comprehended by us, who understand nothing without the service of the senses and the discourse of reason. But God, existing far above every position, remains subject neither to the senses of mortals nor to reason, as he is read to have said to Moses: No man shall see me and live. Hence also the divine evangelist John says: No one has ever seen God. Nor is this any wonder. For since God is the first and everlasting intellect, most pure, most simple, most perfect, immobile, the creator, incomprehensible, highest, and far above every position, immeasurable and uncircumscribable, he could not be comprehended by the human intellect, which is impure, subject to composition, imperfect, mobile, created, comprehensible, lowest, and established under the measure of position.

¶ But concerning that question which seemed to arise from the first, whether God, since he is omnipotent, could have made himself knowable to the human intellect just as to the angelic, I say that no one of sound mind has ever denied that God can do all things. But those things that imply contradiction we say God cannot do, because they are contrary to the order of wisdom that immutably disposes all things, just as they are not doubted to be contrary to the destruction of the whole, and, if I may say so, utterly opposed to it. For it neither was fitting, nor could in any way have happened, that God should be comprehended by the human intellect; since if mortal man, by the dictate of nature, comprehended immortal God, certainly he would no longer seem to have to be called man or mortal, but an angel, and either man would become comparable to God or God to man. For as long as the angelic intellect stands between, the human cannot understand God. And it stands between until the death of the flesh, when the mind, having obtained its natural liberty, escapes wholly equal to the angel. You see now, I believe, emperor, that it is clear that it neither was fitting nor was possible that the human intellect should comprehend the divine: the created comprehend the creator, the temporal the eternal, the mutable the immutable, the weak the omnipotent, since, as a certain philosopher says, there is no proportion of the finite to the infinite. Therefore it is necessary for mortals to believe in immortal God, whom we can comprehend by no manifest reasoning. Although the order of the whole universe declares an author who provides for all things, and although we understand nothing besides him to have been brought forth into being without a beginning, nevertheless what God is and in what manner he is, the human mind cannot grasp:

Since he is far above all things that we, or any mortal, can understand concerning him, he is far beyond, outside, and above every affirmation, as holy Dionysius says. For he is neither soul nor sense; nor does he have imagination or opinion, or reason or understanding; nor is he reason or understanding; nor is he spoken of or understood. Nor is he number, multitude, order, magnitude, smallness, equality, likeness, or unlikeness; nor does he stand or move; nor does he bring about rest or have power; nor is he power or light; nor does he live, nor is he life, substance, age, or time. There is no spiritual contact with him; he is not form, truth, kingdom, wisdom, one, unity, deity, authority, or spirit, so far as we can know him. Nor is there a designation of Son or Father; nor is he anything else among those things known to us or to anyone else in the world. Nor is he anything of the things that are not, nor of the things that are; nor do the things that are know him as he himself is. Nor is there speech, name, or knowledge of him; nor is he darkness or light, error or truth; nor is there any affirmation or negation of him at all. For he, the perfect and singular cause of all things, is above every affirmation; and his excellence is above every negation, namely the excellence of him who is simply free from all things and above all things.

Therefore, Dionysius says, we say that since he is the cause of all things above all things, he is neither without substance nor without life; nor does he lack reason or mind; nor is he body, figure, or species; nor does he have quality, quantity, or mass. Nor is he in a place, nor is he seen; nor does he have sensible touch; nor does he sense, nor is he sensible; nor is he subject to rashness or disturbance, agitated by fleshly passions. Nor is he weak, subject to sensible accidents; nor is he in need of light; nor does he admit change, corruption, division, or flux; nor is he, or does he have, any other thing belonging to sensible things.

Hence, since he is far above every affirmation, excelling what is posited, he could not be comprehended by a creature that necessarily uses the senses for understanding, as the true Peripatetic said: nothing is in our intellect unless it has first been in the sense. Therefore God, who is not subject to the senses of mortals, far exceeds human understanding. According to affirmative positing he is truly altogether in all things; and according to negative removal, the nearer one approaches, he is none of all the things that are subject to mortal knowledge. Indeed, since he is above all things, he can be none of those things that are subject to him. Therefore Empedocles beautifully gave a likeness, saying: God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Let human understanding now lift itself as far as it can; and let whoever strives to comprehend God rightly understand and comprehend the center of this imagined sphere, together with its circumference ending nowhere. But if he is not able to understand this proposition of the likeness properly, why does he strive to investigate the essence of God, which exists above every affirmation?

Most unconquered Caesar, may it not weary you to hear another likeness concerning God from Cusanus, formerly cardinal priest of the Roman Church, my fellow Mosellan, a man most learned in those times, who says: God is a straight line of infinite length, which makes a circle. Now then let us see: if it is a straight line, how does it make a circle? But if it makes a circle, how is it straight? For a circle and a straight line are naturally opposed. Nevertheless, a line of infinite length, since it has neither beginning nor end, necessarily makes a circle, although it is proposed to be imagined not as curved but as straight. Since therefore God is infinite, greatest without quantity, best without quality, all things in all things without circumscription, above all things without an excluding position: It was not possible, therefore, that he should be comprehended by the circumscribed human intellect, which uses the service of the senses for understanding, or that what is promised to it when at last purified in the fatherland should be granted to it, confused and impure, on the way. But after our mind, at last released from the flesh, has escaped to its own center, which is God, clean, simple, pure, perfect, and consummated, and we have been made equal to the angels, we shall know God perfectly, and all things, just as the holy Apostle says to the Corinthians: “Now we see through a mirror and in an enigma; but then face to face.” Therefore we said that the angelic intellect, by the guidance of nature, adheres immovably to its own principle, because it is pure act and habit; and since it is naturally simple in condition, it can be hindered by no commerce of composition. But the human intellect, as it is now sufficiently clear has been explained, since it is potentiality and privation, is impure because of its commerce with its body; indeed it is held back from perfect act until at last, released from the flesh, it has passed into the fellowship of likeness with the angels, then for the first time to be admitted to the true knowledge of God. But if meanwhile the affection of love, necessary for salvation, is joined to present Christian faith and future divine knowledge, the same eternal blessedness prepared for the worshippers of God will be granted together with the holy angels. But if a depraved mind, through too much commerce with its flesh, has scorned the love of God, then indeed the intellect, released from its prison-house, will escape to the sublime knowledge belonging to it by nature according to its measure; but it will be the more wretched, the more by evil will it is found to be like the demons. Therefore, to conclude as best I may the solution of the question proposed, I say that it is not possible for almighty God to be perfectly understood by us so long as, mortal, we dwell in the flesh.

ON FAITH NECESSARY FOR SALVATION: The Second Question.

Question Second

The second question of your unconquered majesty was this: Since today only a small part of the world is subject to the laws of the Christian faith, whether that opinion of very many people seems admissible without injury to the truth, namely, of those who think that each person, in his own religion which he believes to be true and saving, as a worshipper of one God, can be saved outside the Christian faith without baptism, provided that he knows nothing of the religion of Christ.

To answer this question simply, according to the common understanding, I judged superfluous, since I know that today many among Christians, through a sort of impious piety for the salvation of lost men, make themselves cruel toward God. But because the cause of just consideration moved your most serene highness to ask these things, not because you do not know what must be held as Catholic in this position, but so that you might have something true to set against those who attack it, I shall answer the questions as briefly as I can. If anyone could be saved outside the Christian faith, Christ, the Son of almighty God, would seem to have been made man superfluously and without cause. For if there is salvation outside Christ, Christ is not the savior of all. But because it was necessary, according to the Scriptures, that the only-begotten Son of God, for the salvation of the human race, be born as a man in the world, suffer, die, and rise again on the third day, he did not come into this world in vain, nor superfluously, nor without cause. Since this is so, whoever asserts that anyone can be saved outside the faith of Christ shows himself not a Christian, but an adversary of the faith and a deserter of Christ. For whoever does not believe in Christ the Son of God promises himself eternal salvation in vain. For he himself, Jesus Christ, who is the truth, says in the holy Gospel: “He who does not believe is already judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And again, a little later, he adds, saying: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who is unbelieving toward the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” Saint Christophylus also says: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

The solution to the proposed question is now clear to all who truly believe in Christ: salvation is through him, the Savior of the world, and whoever does not believe in him cannot be saved. Nor is it permitted for a Christian in any way to go beyond the limits of his religion, so as to presume to explain this question otherwise than Christ taught. But whoever departs from this rule of faith by asserting the contrary plainly shows that he does not think rightly concerning Christ, the Savior of the faithful. For whoever promises salvation to anyone outside Christ wishes to declare Christ a liar.

But we, confirmed by the most sacred ordinances of the Gospel, firmly believe and declare without doubt that no one outside the faith of Christ can be saved, however much he worships one God, however holy or justly he lives, however much he trusts in his paternal religion or another. Christ is salvation, and outside the Christian faith no one will be saved. For why did Christ, the Son of God, wish to die for the sins of the world, if each person could have been saved outside faith in him, in his own paternal tradition? From the beginning of the world, after the fall of the human race, it was impossible for anyone to be saved to eternal life otherwise than in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, he says.

For what of the fact that the greater part of mankind remains outside the faith of Jesus today? Did not the Savior of the world himself long ago foretell in the holy Gospel that many are called, but few are chosen? And again he says: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and spacious is the way that leads to perdition, and many are those who enter through it.” What, we ask, can our salvation contribute to God, who has no need of our goods? For whether many are saved or damned, God himself is the immutable Lord of all; nothing is added to him if all are saved; nothing is lacking if the whole world perishes.

The order of divine providence and majesty is infallible; it embraces those who are to be damned no less than those who are to be saved, each and all. Certainly no one among the damned suffers injury, since, just as in the first man we all fell, so no one is saved except in the blood of Jesus Christ through mercy, and no one is damned except in his own unbelief and by desert through justice.

From what has been set forth, another question of no small difficulty arises, which human curiosity is accustomed to raise against those who think rightly concerning the faith of Christ: Why does almighty God, since he is just and merciful, not cease to create so many thousands of men whom he most certainly foreknew were to be damned? Why does he not spare the wretched, and not bring forth into destruction in so great a multitude those whom he foreknew would turn aside to evil? For it would seem better not to be than to be evilly.

To this question let him answer who thinks himself God’s counselor. Who am I, that I should explain the cause of the divine will? For all things whatsoever the Lord willed, he made in heaven and on earth; there is no one who can resist his will. Hence a certain wise man says to God: “Who will charge it to you if the nations that you made perish?” The almighty has established an order of alternation for things, which he will never revoke by any fullness of change. For just as he permits his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, so until the end of the age he allows men to be conceived, born, and grow, the pious and the impious. The thoughts of men are not in God, nor does he change his counsel according to time; but since he is immutable and eternal, willing all things together and at once and always, he has from eternity unchangeably preordained them. God speaks once, as Scripture bears witness, and does not add; since whatever he wills, he wills immovably and admits no change. Therefore, that men should be born good and evil, pious and impious, faithful and faithless, sinners and saints, those to be saved and those to be damned, occurs by a most just reason God permits this, who assigned this order to all things. Nothing is lost to God, who is Lord of all, and who holds his dominion everywhere, confirmed no less over evil men and spirits than over good ones. Christ Jesus, God from God the Father outside time, and man from the Virgin in time, appointed mediator between God and human beings, is himself the one through whom we have access to God. He is the Savior of all the faithful; and anyone thinks wrongly of him who rashly grants that anyone at all can be saved without the Christian faith. The omnipotence of God respects the order of things which he established; according to its inviolable sequence of rectitude, no one will be saved without faith in Christ; no one who does not believe in the Son of God is justified. Therefore those are moved by vain and utterly foolish piety who think that anyone outside the faith of Christ, in the whole world and in any sect whatever, is to be saved, since this is plainly contrary to his sentence.

Let them hear the Savior himself again saying in the Gospel: No one comes to the Father except through me. For I am the way, the truth, and the life. If no one comes to the Father except through the Son, certainly no one will be saved except through him. Who will save the Jew and the pagan, since no one can be saved except through Christ? But Christ will undoubtedly save only those who believe in him with heart, speech, and deed. He will not save the Jew, not the Saracen, not the pagan, not any other unbeliever, because he does not believe in him; rather, they despise his doctrine, contemn the faith, and, blaspheming his holy name, vilify it all day long. For he himself said in the Gospel: Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, I also shall be ashamed of him before my Father and his holy angels.

Tell me now, you who worship Christ and contend that someone can be saved outside the Christian faith in his own sect, which he thinks true: do you believe the Gospel of Christ to be true or false? If true, why do you think contrary to it? For Christ says: Whoever has not believed in the Son of God, the wrath of God remains upon him; and he has already been judged and will be condemned; and that no one comes to the Father except through me. But you, seduced by I know not what rashness, thrust in the contrary, saying that a man outside the faith of Christ, trusting in his ancestral religion, which he believes to be true and pleasing to God, or living innocently according to the law of nature, especially since perhaps he has never heard anything about the faith of Christ, is to be saved in that confidence. Christ did not say this, but: Whoever believes in the only-begotten Son of God will be saved; but whoever does not believe has already been judged. He excepted no one; he admitted no condition, since he who had come to suffer for all had provided for the salvation of all through faith alone. If faith in the Savior is lacking, then no confidence will save the unbeliever.

For the holy bishop Augustine said in On Faith to Peter: Hold most firmly, and do not doubt in any way, that not only all pagans, but also all Jews, heretics, and schismatics who end this present life outside the catholic Church will go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. You see now where foolish compassion draws you: you who measure God by human laws, so that you may make him merciful in all things, do not fear to judge his only-begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, a liar. But Christ is truthful, who says that those who do not believe in him are to be damned; you, however, are rash and liars, because you trust that someone can be saved outside his faith. Whoever truly believes in Christ does not permit anyone at all outside the unity of the catholic Church of Christians to be said to be saved. Who says the contrary? For this is the inviolable sentence of catholic tradition, which the Lord Jesus himself, the Son of God, defined in the holy Gospel: namely, that no one is to be saved outside his faith, which he himself instituted, taught, and confirmed by his own blood. Therefore whoever says that a man is to be saved in any sect whatever outside the faith of Jesus Therefore, whoever has affirmed, or has believed in his heart, that a person is to be saved in any sect outside the faith of Jesus Christ, is not a good Christian, but rather an apostate and a disciple of Antichrist; unless he comes to his senses, let him know that he is to be tormented forever in hell with him. For he is an Antichrist, not a Christian, who says that one who does not believe in the Lord Jesus is to be saved without the Savior. Therefore, most wise Caesar, let no one appear in the sight of your majesty, and let no one sense that you adhere to him, who thinks that people are to be saved outside the faith of Jesus Christ. For everyone who has believed that anyone is to be saved outside the faith of Christ has denied both Christ and his Gospel.

But when we say that all who are not Christians are to be damned, this is a sign not of cruelty but of true piety. For it is better to believe firmly in the truth than to assent falsely to a human being. That all Jews, pagans, gentiles, Saracens, schismatics, heretics, and unbelievers are without doubt to be damned eternally with the demons is attested by the holy Church, which took and confirmed this judgment from no other source than from the words of Christ. For thus he said: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life,” by which the faith and work of a good Christian are signified. “But he who is unbelieving toward the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” Here all Jews, pagans, Saracens, gentiles, and all who do not believe in our Lord Jesus Christ are designated. Concerning schismatics and heretics, however, Christ’s judgment is manifest in the Gospel, where he says: “If he refuses to hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican.” Heathens are gentiles; publicans are manifest and public sinners, of whose utterly certain damnation the holy Church does not doubt. For who among Christians would doubt that gentiles and monstrous and manifest sinners are to be damned? Since, therefore, all schismatics and heretics despise the Church of the saints, they are most rightly said to be like the gentiles and publicans who are to be damned for their crimes and deserts, and they will justly undergo with them equal punishments of everlasting damnation.

Behold those whom the just sentence of Christ the Savior has damned: does the foolish compassion of men, not to say impious cruelty, presume that they are to be saved? They desire to be merciful toward lost men, and do not fear to show themselves cruel toward God. Those whom he, by justice, has assigned to death, they assert, by the worst presumption, are to be recalled to life. It is neither good nor useful for a Christian, whether in earnest or in jest, to contradict Christ. He is impious, not a Christian, whoever says that unbelievers are to be saved.

When Adam, the first man, perished, we all sinned, and the wrath of God remained upon the whole human race from the beginning of the world until Christ. Christ came, born of a virgin; being God and man, innocent of sin, he voluntarily underwent the death of the cross, and, having become mediator between God and man, removed the wrath of original guilt from those who believe in him. For thus he says: “He who believes in the only-begotten Son of God has eternal life. But he who is unbelieving toward the Son shall not see life; rather, the wrath of God remains upon him.” Indeed, without faith in Jesus Christ no one will be saved, however justly and holily he may seem to live in his own religion. For almighty God can save a believer without material baptism, but he cannot save one who denies without faith. No one is saved unwillingly, because no one believes unless willingly. For the Lord knows who are his, since he saves those who believe in the Son through repentance, but condemns unbelievers by the equity of justice.

Hence, while these matters were closed off, a new question struck the mind. What is to be thought about the infants and fools of unbelieving pagans and Jews? To this one must answer briefly. Just as the infants of Christians, baptized in the faith of their parents, are saved, so the unbaptized children of all unbelievers will be damned in the perfidy of their parents. The judgment concerning fools of either religion is similar: just as we believe without doubt that baptized fools of Christians are to be saved, so we should say without doubt that those of unbelievers are to be damned.

B iij Again here he asks what, according to Catholic teaching, is to be thought about those people who inhabit the newly discovered islands in the great sea, of which no mention is made among the old cosmographers, and who, as we have been informed, have never heard anything at all of the Christian religion. A brief answer is given, conforming in all respects to what has been written before: Truth has utterly excepted from damnation no one who does not believe: not an islander, not one contiguous with our world, not anyone else, whether dwelling near or far away; but without distinction and without limitation of persons he concluded, saying, “He who believes and has been baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned,” and the wrath of God remains upon him.

Who removes the wrath of God from man, except our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the mediator between God and men? By what means, except through faith formed in him who, though innocent, tasted death? Since, therefore, no one is saved without faith, we cannot promise salvation to those ignorant of Christ, since it is clear that they do not have the piety of faith in him. Necessarily, then, we shall say that all who do not believe in the Son of God are damned, whether they have heard of him or are wholly ignorant of him.

Yet we grant one thing: if any among those who are ignorant of Christ lived well according to the law of nature, invoking one God, even if they sometimes sinned, provided they had done penance before death, they have been or are to be less gravely damned than those who either hear of Christ and despise him, or who among either group lived wickedly and foully. For God is just; he does wrong to no one, but renders to each according to his works. But the wrath of God remains upon everyone who does not believe in his only-begotten Son, because of the original sin of the first man, from which no one is justified except through faith and the baptism of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But if original sin alone is present in a person, as in little children, unless it is removed through Christ it condemns the one who has it to the penalty of loss only, by which, namely, he is barred from the vision of God and from the enjoyment of the happiness of the saints forever. But an adult who sins mortally will be punished after death with a double penalty, namely of loss and of sense, so that he both does not see God and, feeling the pains of the fire of Gehenna without end, never escapes them.

Jews, however, and Saracens, and all the rest who hear the faith of Christ and despise it are without doubt damned to both penalties, of loss and of sense, whether otherwise they live innocently according to the law of nature or the contrary. But among those who have never had any hearing of Christ, if any should live innocently according to the law of nature until death, I do not think they have furnished cause for it to be said or believed that they are to be damned to the penalty, although they are deprived forever of the vision of God, which theologians have called the penalty of the damned. For no one will behold the face of God the Father almighty unless he has been reborn through faith in Christ.

¶ Now let us pronounce judgment against those who, when we assert these things in Catholic fashion according to Christ’s doctrine, object with foolish reflection: Why did God, since he is supremely good, wish to create so many thousands of human beings whom he foreknew from eternity would be damned? For if Christians are compared with unbelievers, scarcely a twentieth part of the people of the whole world today believes in our Lord Jesus Christ. The boundless curiosity of this question has often struck many; if their faith in Christ were firm and their devotion fervent in love for him, they would not ask things so unusual and difficult. For who is found among mortals of such honor in learning or holiness that, apart from God himself, he might disclose to us the cause of the divine will? The will of God is incomprehensible, because he himself is the cause of his most righteous will. The everlasting order is inviolable; and, as I said above, God does wrong to no one.

When God judged that a universal flood should come upon the earth, were not only eight people saved in the ark, while all the rest perished by the inundation of the waters? The cause of their being struck down was sin. That they were created had no other cause than the uncircumscribable goodness of God. That few are saved while many perish, a figure preceded the mystery; and Noah’s ark [was a figure] of the Christian faith sacrament. For indeed, just as all perished in the flood outside Noah’s ark, so now all who are outside the unity of the catholic Church of Christians will without doubt perish eternally in their sins: Jews as well as pagans, heretics likewise and schismatics. The justice of God condemns those whom his goodness created. But mercy saves those whom grace has confirmed, because, as the holy Apostle says, it is not of the one who wills, nor of the one who runs, but of God who has mercy; for he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. If we rightly weigh the freedom of human choice, we shall also know the just will of God.

ON THE MIRACLES

Of Unbelievers. Third Question.

Question Third

The third question of your most serene majesty was: If no one is saved outside the faith, whence come miracles among unbelievers, since we know from the report of many that astonishing things occur even among unbelievers?

The solution of this question, as it seems to me, will not be difficult if we give credence both to the Scriptures and apply the necessary consideration to the natural powers of the soul. A miracle is a new and unusual event, which occurs beyond ordinary custom and draws human beings into wonder. Hence good Christians perform miracles in one way, bad Christians in another, and unbelievers in yet another. Good Christians perform miracles through public righteousness; bad Christians, however, through signs of public righteousness; but unbelievers through private contracts with demons, that is, implicit or explicit ones. Concerning the good, indeed, the Lord said in the holy Gospel: These signs shall follow those who have believed. In my name they shall cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it shall not harm them. They shall lay hands upon the sick, and they shall be well.

Concerning bad Christians, however, who perform miracles in the name of Jesus Christ, we read thus written in the Gospel: Many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name done many mighty works? And then I shall declare to them: I never knew you; depart from me, all you who work iniquity. But outside the Church of God, where the name of our Lord Jesus Christ is not invoked, if any marvels are done beyond the custom of nature or human art, no good Christian doubts that they are done by the cooperation of demons. And works of this sort your Caesarean Serenity, by discernment of power, judges should rather be called marvels than miracles. Nor does this judgment depart from the reason of truth, insofar as there should be a necessary distinction between the prodigies of light and of darkness.

I find four agents of wondrous things, but I recognize one alone, God, who truly works miracles, chiefly as the cause of all good things. Therefore the first and greatest agent of all marvels is God, who has illuminated the whole world by filling it with signs, miracles, and mighty works; none of the rest is to be compared with him. He created heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them; he alone is omnipotent, just, holy, and upright; good, incomprehensible, greatest, glorious, immeasurable, and everlasting. Let all other things be beneath him, for whatever can happen wondrously in this world is certainly less than the whole world itself, which he was able to create from nothing. Every miracle, too, that can be done through a human being is less than the human being himself, whom God, the creator of all things, formed from the beginning in his own image and likeness. And although the visible miracles of God among mortals, through the constant habit of seeing natural things, have now almost become commonplace, nevertheless, if we behold them wisely, they will appear greater and rarer than all unusual things. But the manner in which God performs miracles is the unchangeable will of God, which, since it is omnipotent, does all things whatsoever it has willed in heaven and on earth. For he himself spoke, and they were made. Cj They were made; he himself commanded, and they were created. The will of God is ordered and everlasting; therefore his miracles are incomparably greater than all others. For greater than all the miracles of this world is what we behold: the whole universe, and whatever is contained in it, created by the will of God. The unchangeable divine will works all things, enduring, because it lacks both beginning and end. But whatever God wills, he always wills; since in him to will and to be able are the same, labor does not belong to the unchangeable one. Thus all the universal miracles that the Creator of all things performs he has presented for good and evil alike to behold; and after the general miracles, which have now grown cheap among mortals through familiarity, he has also shown, in almost every single creature, countless things especially worthy of wonder.

The second performer of miracles is the good angel, who very often works wonders for mortals both by natural virtue and by divine power. For those most blessed spirits are sent by divine ordinance in ministry to the faithful; they furnish to both good and evil the things that are benefits of nature, but only to those who believe in God and our Lord Jesus Christ do they administer the gifts of saving grace. Hence there is no doubt that those miracles which are done in the Church of the saints by invocation of the divine name are displayed by their ministry and cooperation. But the wonders of unbelievers, if any are done today or are read to have been done formerly, are either fabricated or falsely reported, or are accomplished by the mockery of demons. For it cannot happen that unbelievers perform any miracles by the ministry of good angels, since where Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is not believed, no signs of grace are displayed by good spirits to impious and reprobate men. Indeed, since they are obstinate in the error of a false religion, if in their own estimation they have obtained any miracle, there is no reason whatever to doubt that it is done through the ministry of demons. For since they are wholly unlike the good angels, they attain no familiarity with them. No despiser of the Christian faith can please God; but whoever is shown to displease almighty God is without doubt deprived of the familiarity of the holy angels. Yet by this I do not take back the claim that every human being has been entrusted to some good spirit, by whose ministry, even if he is unbelieving toward the Son of God, he may receive the benefits of nature, though he may not attain the gifts of grace. But to those who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ they confer not only the benefits of nature, but also administer the gifts of grace. It is therefore manifest that, if any miracles are done among unbelievers, they cannot be done by the gift of God or by the ministry of the holy angels, since all are placed outside the unity of the Church, and signs cannot be worked by the impious through public righteousness. For God, as has been said, does not remove his original wrath from man except through faith in Jesus Christ; but everyone who is unbelieving toward the Son of God will not see eternal life, but the wrath of God remains upon him. Therefore everyone upon whom the wrath of God remains will not be able to please him; and so, if any wondrous things are done at his prayers, they should be believed to have been performed not by the power of God nor by the ministry of angels, but rather by the intervention of demons.

The third performer of wonders is the devil, who, like an ape, is eager to imitate whatever he has seen, and deceives the minds of men, especially unbelievers, with various illusions; and he believes that, by a certain likeness of miracles, he can seduce those who believe in him, for it is agreed that they were created by nature subtler than all mortals. They cannot know the thoughts of mortals except by a kind of conjecture, when, that is, our inward things are made manifest by certain signs. Demons foretell future things, and sometimes they speak truly; sometimes, making conjectures, they are deceived and deceive. From the beginning of the world they have known certain signs that precede events; by experience and use of these signs they sometimes foretell as true what is going to happen, because when they have seen signs known to themselves preceding a matter, they immediately conjecture what is in a person's thought. Yet more often they deceive, because they themselves are also deceived. For when concerning some when they are asked about a matter which they do not know: for example, whether a messenger sent far away will return soon, or on what day. Immediately, in the blink of an eye, they arrive at the place where they know him to be; and when they have seen that he has already begun the journey of return, they carefully count the stages, and, suddenly returning to the questioner, affirm that the absent man will come on a definite day. But if he has either delayed on the road or turned aside elsewhere, then certainly the demons, now deceived in their own judgment, must be mistaken.

They gladly involve themselves in prophecies, and are quite ready to foretell future things to human beings for the sake of honor and esteem, since they very much desire to be regarded as worthy of admiration. They seek divine honors, and greatly desire to be feared by mortals. Just as boys, hiding in secret or running about masked, suddenly burst out from their hiding places and shake with unexpected terror their companions, who suspect no such thing, and then hide themselves again lest they be recognized; when they see the unsuspecting ones terrified, they boast as if they had obtained some great honor from this. After the example of these, certain demons, more bound to the earth and very restless, who move about among human beings, whom the ancients called Bacucei, terrify people at night; and they seek nothing more from mortals than the reputation of divinity. Hence also, before those with whom they are permitted to be by reason of likeness, they sometimes perform various tricks, and present themselves as terrifying in people’s minds as occasion permits. Whenever they can, they gladly clothe themselves in the likeness of a human body; but they do not always find suitable material of air with which to be clothed. For this reason they often appear monstrous and horrible, because they have not had suitable humors or vapors for perfecting the appearance they desired. But the more they are bound to earthly dwellings, the more, by that circumstance, they have been made dull with respect to matter. Hence, because of the ignorance which they contracted through disobedience, the predictions of demons are frequently false, although by divine permission they are sometimes even verified.

For, as that most holy John Chrysostom says, it is sometimes granted to the devil to speak the truth, so that he may commend his lie by rare truth; because if he never spoke the truth, he could deceive no one, and his seduction would by no means suffice for tempting. It is therefore not astonishing if demons sometimes seem to foretell true things to unbelieving human beings, since they once could offer prophecies to the gentiles in idols. Nor is it astonishing if they sometimes provide care for the sick, since they know the natures of all herbs and can very easily apply themselves to the ill, and either remove diseases which they had previously inflicted, or for a time withdraw from the senses those which chance has inflicted. For almighty God, by the right of imperial majesty over all things, uses even the ministry of demons both for the testing of the faithful and for the punishment of the impious. Since they are perverse in affection, obstinate in their rebellion, and proud, they greatly desire divine esteem and honors; and therefore they gladly answer the invocations of unbelievers which they are accustomed to pour out to the gods, as if they themselves were gods.

Among unbelievers they sometimes seem to raise the dead to life, and they show marvelous things to curious people, so that they may render them altogether obstinate in their former error, as if confirmed by miracles. Yet they do not truly raise the dead, but deceive the senses of human beings in various ways: for either they themselves enter the corpses of the dead and carry them about for a time as if alive, or, after those bodies have been taken away to a more remote place, they display to the spectators some image in the appearance of the person who has departed life, as the experience of certain people has informed us. We believe it manifest that demons can show, in a certain false likeness, all the things whatsoever that the saints do as miracles in truth. All the miracles of demons are either phantasms, or things done by a certain natural skill. For if human beings in the more hidden matters of nain the mysteries of nature, by a certain application of matter to form that is hidden from others, produce unusual and wondrous effects, such as forming natural eels from the dew of heaven, bees from calves’ flesh, serpents from certain roots of herbs, and many things similar to these, not to mention greater things, as experiment has made us experienced in very many cases, who would deny that demons, subtler in nature and of greater experience, can naturally accomplish more wondrous things that are manifest to no human beings?

The fourth worker of miracles, however, is man, who works wonders in four ways, which to those who know neither the cause nor the manner do not seem human. First, indeed, by invocation of the divine name, when in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ there concurs the merit of accepted holiness. In this way the holy apostles and their imitators, by the power of God and likewise by the merit of holiness, wrought miracles in the unity of faith. But in this way unbelievers cannot work miracles, for they do not walk the necessary path of faith unto salvation. For even if many of them believe in one God, nevertheless, because they refuse to believe in the mediator between God and men, they have gone very far away from the mercy of God.

But, as the holy Gospel promises, all things are possible for those who believe in God and our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, for those who also adorn right faith with holy works. For indeed, just as without faith it is impossible to please God, so also faith without works is dead. For almighty God would grant us all the things that we ask in the faith of Christ, if we did all things according to the faith that we owe. Believe firmly and act faithfully, and you will always obtain all things.

Second, a man works miracles by likeness to angelic purity. For the purer our mind becomes through love, confirmed in the faith of Jesus Christ, so much the more, made like to the holy angels, does it attain greater familiarity with them. Whoever, however, has attained complete familiarity with the holy angels, when he wishes, by God’s bounty, he will shine forth in miracles.

For the holy angels reveal to pure men, and to those fervent in the love of God, secrets hidden from others, and by command of the Creator they make many things manifest to them. For the Lord is near to those who call upon him in truth. The Lord will do the will of those who fear him; and he will hear their prayers and save them. For whoever through grace is one with Christ is refreshed by the frequent visitation of angels; and, as often as necessity requires it, he is made illustrious by signs and powers through their ministry.

Hence it is that those also who are weighed down by various illnesses betake themselves to the intercessions of the saints; and, calling to mind the promises of the Lord, they obtain by another’s merits what they cannot obtain by their own. Their holy devotion in the faith of Christ receives salvation from the Lord; for, aided by the purity of its own conscience and supported by the merit of another’s holiness, it rises, not rashly, into sure hope.

Miracles, however, occur in the Church of God by divine power with a threefold regard or means. For sometimes almighty God works a miracle by the ministry of angels, solely by the merits of the worker himself, as Saint Martin healed a blind man and a lame man against their will. Sometimes miracles occur by the merit of the sufferer alone, as we read that many were cured through bad Christians whom the sick believed to be very good in the faith. Third, that healings of this kind occur by the merits of both is to be held, since Christ says to a certain person in the holy Gospel: If you can believe, all things are possible to the believer. For faith is always required for a miracle, so that our Lord Jesus Christ, coming into his own country, wondered that he could not do any mighty work there because of their unbelief. But none of these things is done among unbelievers, where neither holiness in the worker nor orthodox faith in the sufferer is found.

Third, therefore, a man works miracles through the intervening cooperation of diabolical depravity; and this can happen in three ways, namely by manifest involvement and supposition in the invocation of demons, Through manifest invocation necromancers and the little women whom we commonly call witches perform wondrous things, having been corrupted by likeness of will and passed into the fellowship of demons. For just as in the Church of God the sacraments are signs of the invisible grace of the Holy Spirit, so in the school of demons certain characters and modes of invocation are marks of a pact between a human being and an evil spirit. Hence, when witches display the signs of demons, the invoked evil spirits have commonly been glad to come to them and to exhibit both dreadful works of witchcraft and certain wondrous things.

But witches and necromancers produce wondrous effects by the invocation of demons in different ways. Witches subject themselves to demons by a certain kind of profession; by their ministry they trouble the air, raise storms, ravage crops, and make human beings and beasts ill. They carry on foul commerce of the filthiest pleasure with demons, and by pernicious charms call back from the lower world into sight whomever they wish. The deeds of these women should not be called miracles, but rather acts of witchcraft, and deservedly punished with the severest penalty.

Necromancers, however, subject themselves to demons not by a manifest profession, but by an implicit condition, when they promise to compel them to appear visibly in a circle, not only by conjurations and the display of characters, but also by sacrifices, fumigations, and vows. Their crimes are without number, since it is clear that all, whether implicitly or explicitly, conspire into the fellowship of demons. Although not all necromancers are equal in either art or practice, yet all are united, to their own destruction, by a damnable curiosity, by which they desire, with the aid of demons, to attain what they cannot discover naturally. All their works and volumes are full of superstitions and impiety, and for that reason must be driven far from the borders of believers.

There is in the East a great multitude of enchanters and necromancers, who by their illusions miserably deceive the human race, and long ago turned almost all Asia Major and Asia Minor away from the faith of Christ. Illusions can be produced in three ways: by the ministry of demons, by the operation of nature, and by the deception of human art. No true Christian will doubt that the miracles of unbelievers are produced in one of these ways, once the determinate root of the agent has been established. Today, moreover, there are many among Christians devoted to the works of demons: enchanters, witches, and those reprobate concerning the faith, who deceive many by excessive curiosity and promise impossibilities by their arts.

Through the implication of demons, however, wondrous things are sometimes done: namely, whenever a person not sufficiently and rightly grounded in the faith works for or wishes something otherwise than befits a Christian, even if he believes there is no sin in it; and although it ought not to happen, nevertheless the devil, inserting himself, very often supplies the desired effect. Such is the practice which sufferers from spasms commonly use. On the holy day of Parasceve, during the office, they fashion a ring of any metal, which they thereafter always wear on the heart-finger. These things are utterly vain and have no root of truth at all. Yet I cannot deny that I have seen some people cured of spasm by this same vanity.

Likewise, I know that certain men have opened very strong locks with words and herbs; I do not think this was done either by the power of God or by the force of the things applied. I could introduce countless similar cases which I have seen and heard: what else are their manifest effects but certain miracles? Finally, there are some exceedingly curious people who, by stubbornly placing faith and confidence in characters, slips, rings, figures, necklaces, and unknown words, often obtain wondrous effects. We by no means doubt that the devil has supplied these, not by merit of holiness nor by mercy granted by God, but rather through faithless credulity. For demons, having the greatest envy of the human race, gladly come to vain practices in order to destroy the souls of mortals. in the operations of the impious. For what else are characters and interpretations of hidden names than certain foods and drinks for demons? Whoever puts faith in characters that promise marvelous effects has implicitly denied both the faith of Christ and the Church of the saints. Alas, how many Christians today, how many clerics, how many priests, to spare those of higher rank, use many and various superstitions in their daily actions; through these they follow compacts with demons bound up in them, to the insult of the Christian faith and to their own condemnation. And because these evils have now multiplied too greatly among Christians, the Almighty has withdrawn his hand and handed them over into the dominion of the faithless, so that they may feel as exactors of punishments those in imitation of whom they were stubbornly serving, not the living and true God, but empty superstitions.

But that marvelous things are done by the substitution of demons we plainly recognize, if we inquire more carefully into the truth. For Jews, Saracens, pagans, or gentiles, who do not believe in our God Jesus Christ, if they perform any miracles, are believed to do them not by the power of God, not by the ministry of angels, not by the merit of holiness, but by the substitution of demons. For as often as they invoke almighty God, in whose only-begotten Son they do not believe, for the mercy of some marvelous effect, the devil, knowing that there is no salvation for sinners, and that the Most High does not hear unbelieving sinners, secretly applies himself in place of the God invoked, in order to keep them obstinate in their errors; and, if he can, with the Lord permitting it, he grants to those praying what is requested. The devil uses this substitution all the more freely, the less he is hindered by the faith of Christ and the sacraments of the Church. For the wrath of God remains upon all unbelievers who do not believe in his only-begotten Son; and they are in the power of the devil, and therefore, when invoked, he enters in place of God. Hence, blinded in their errors, they invoke God, in whose Son they do not believe; and when he, holding them in wrath, scorns to hear them, the devil, a false worker of wonders, comes near. Therefore they believe the mockeries of the devil, they who disdain to believe the true miracles of God. From demons they receive false miracles suited to their errors, who by believing were unwilling to follow the truth, that is, Christ. For there are many among the unbelievers who, worshiping one God, the creator of all things, do not adore idols, and firmly believe that they will be saved in their own faith. But because they disdain to believe the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation, the wrath of God remains upon them, and they vanish away in their foolishness. Thinking God to be near to them, though they do not believe rightly in him, they are subjected to demons; and, putting faith in their false miracles, they are confirmed in their errors by falsehood.

It may not be wearisome to have introduced a likeness of this matter, O Caesar. There was a certain swineherd who had enclosed in a stick a small sheet containing the name of the holy martyr Blaise; he put such faith in it that he believed every wolf would be prevented from approaching if the staff were fixed in the ground in the middle of the herd. This foolish confidence, at last strengthened by long experience, made the man go safely wherever he wished, leaving the pigs in the wood without danger, since no wolf now had any access to a pig. It happened that a certain man passed by, while the shepherd was absent, and, seeing a demon keeping guard over the herd, said to him: “What are you doing here, wretched one?” He replied: “I am guarding these pigs.” But he said: “Who entrusted the care of pigs to you?” “The foolish confidence of the shepherd. For he enclosed a certain small sheet in a stick, thinking it to be of great piety and virtue, so that by the merits of some Blaise wolves might be kept away from the pigs; he has sinned against his own law and follows our vanities. But because the one invoked does not appear, I, lest the man lose his confidence, guard his pigs for him; and I willingly substitute myself for Blaise. Thus ungrateful mortals harass us with vain conjurations, so that, unless we wish to lose all esteem and honor among them, we must, I confess, often come in answer to their foolish invocations.” By the likeness of this deed demons deceive unbelievers. and the miracles that they ask of God when praying they more often attain through the substitution of malignant spirits. For in matters that concern the worship or honor of God, demons gladly thrust themselves in; and those who cannot obtain open honors take great delight in hidden ones.

At the same time it must be noted that from the beginning of the world no religion or sect of chief eminence has ever lacked miracles, although they have not all been done from one principle. For whatever miracles have been done in the true religion have been done from no source other than God. The law of nature had its miracles; the written law had them; grace now has them as well. The almighty God who gave religion also himself performs miracles. But in false religions, where truth is not worshiped, if any miracles are done, it is not God but the devil who works them. For since God is truth, he did not establish false religions; and therefore he has never made falsehood illustrious by his miracles. Mahomet, who, full of an evil demon, established a false religion, adorned it with false miracles not from God but by the cooperation of demons. For the demon who gave the cause of the error could also, once the occasion had been taken, display a false miracle to those deceived. Hence, if miracles had been wholly lacking to Mahomet as he was persuading a rude people of a new religion, perhaps no one would have put faith in him. For he too showed certain wondrous things to the peoples, as much by subtlety of intellect as by the cooperation of the devil, so that he seemed to have confirmed a new doctrine also by new miracles. Miracles were not lacking even to the idolatrous pagans, if we do not deny credence to histories. But the Jews, before the incarnation of the Son of God, receiving his law through Moses, were often made illustrious by divine miracles. Yet after the Lord's resurrection, when the Mosaic law had been made void, those who do not believe in the only-begotten Son of God remain under the wrath of his indignation; and all miracles of truth have ceased among them. Hence, if they do any wondrous things today, they are works of demons and manifest signs of error. For demons, with the greatest zeal, keep watch so that those men whom they have once made to wander from the way of truth, which is Christ, they may, by a continuation of fraud until death, make stubborn in error. Indeed, when God for just reason withdraws his grace from unbelievers, their deceiver, a malignant and unknown spirit, approaches; and when he sees that salvation is far away, by false miracles he seduces the minds of the ignorant, as though the Lord were near. Therefore whatever miracles belong to unbelievers are works of demons; for just as there is no salvation for mortals outside the unity of the Christian faith, so without Christ the most holy power does not grant wonders. For now the demons, hiding in ambush, long since defeated and confounded by the trophy of Christ, fear to appear openly as they did before the Lord's incarnation; and therefore among unbelievers they falsely present themselves as good spirits.

There are also some who add a fourth mode to the aforesaid three, saying that the mind or spirit of man himself can naturally do wondrous things, provided it knows how to recall itself from every adventitious thing into itself, above sense, into unity. For those who assert such things promise to perform the wonders of nature, to predict future things, to disclose men's secrets, to remove diseases, and suddenly to change men's counsels. But that mode of miracles cannot be simply natural, certain, common, and infallible; for if it is true, which I have not experienced, some external power must necessarily intervene and partly take possession of the one thinking, whether a good angel or a malignant spirit. But if none of the external powers mixes itself in, the one prophesying must necessarily form the beginning of his speech either from conjectures or from bold presumption, and pronounce a judgment sometimes true, sometimes false. Indeed, as long as the spirit dwells in the body, it naturally understands nothing without the ministry of sense. Hence I would not wholly resist if they grant that our confused and rude intellect is aided by a like ministry. For we see this in those who very often, from a desire of inward love for Jesus, of the flesh while contemplating the mode, pass beyond it: lifted upward from the earth into the air. We think that they surpass bodily weight not merely by their own keenness of mind, but nevertheless by divine power.

Therefore the three principles of the opinion just mentioned, unknown to many, in my judgment are enough for a few: that the mind, placed in the body, by its own power works wondrous effects outside itself. For what? Let anyone ignorant of nature tell me whether bodily weight can be lightened by the operation of the mind. I speak of a thing I experienced, with two others bearing witness with me. When, as a youth, I was pursuing literary studies, four of us were sleeping one night in a single bed. One of the same age arose, and, asleep as he was accustomed to do in dreams, walked about the house with his eyes closed, the full moon shining within, almost as if he were awake. He climbed walls and outdid a squirrel in his agility. He also, while asleep, crossed over the bed a second and a third time; he trod on all of us with his feet, and we felt no greater weight than if some little thing had touched us. Wherever his sleeping body moved, suddenly all the fastenings of the doors opened of their own accord. He very swiftly passed through the higher parts of the house and clung to the roofs like a sparrow. I speak of things seen, not heard by vague report.

These seem to be functions of the soul, not of the body: the soul, by its natural power, so to speak, uses itself almost freely when, the senses of the flesh being bound, it wanders outside the dwelling place of the body. But since this matter is not in every respect suited to the question proposed, let us put off the treatment of the causes of these marvels to another time. For we do not believe that these things are wondrous to wise men, who have very well understood the power and nobility of the human mind, since, hindered only by the interposition of the body, in other respects it is judged equal to angels. Finally, let us pass over fascinations and their various modes and kinds, by which a very furious man works externally very wondrous effects. The imagination of one who trusts very strongly also has much power for producing wondrous effects, whether it is directed toward a true object or toward one imagined. Hence, since there are so many kinds and modes of working wonders, it is not surprising if Jews, Saracens, pagans, gentiles, and all the other unbelievers established outside the faith of Christ, who cannot perform miracles by public justice, carry out wonders either by the support of demons or by artful industry. Nor does it escape me that, by the same reasoning, the miracles of the saints are attacked by the impious, as if they were not done by the power of the Creator but rather by the involvement or substitution of the devil. Whoever truly believes that the Christian faith alone is true does not doubt that all the miracles of unbelievers have been performed by the cooperation of demons. But if anyone rashly and obstinately thinks the contrary, he shows himself to be an unbeliever, not a Christian.

ON SACRED SCRIPTURE

Sacred. Fourth Question.

Question Fourth

The fourth question of your most serene majesty was this: Why did almighty God not give sacred Scripture, containing the mysteries of our faith of both the New and the Old Testament, open, manifest, uniform in all things, plain, and sufficient for all things, but rather wrapped up and in many places full of enigmas? For many things necessary for the perfection of faith are not found sufficiently expressed in the divine Scriptures. To this most sacred question of your majesty, it seems that one must answer: Every Scripture divinely inspired is a perfect work of divinity, ordained before all time, written in time, in no other way than God willed, who inspired men that it should be written. But all the works of God are perfect; and therefore, since the Scripture about which we speak is the work of God, it is necessary to confess that it is perfect in all things. For the supreme judge, God, whose works are all perfect, willed it, and conferred upon his Scriptures the order that he willed; and without doubt he infused into those who received them the manner in which they should write.

For almighty God has conferred such authority and majesty upon Sacred Scripture that, in comparison with it, all the words of this world fail, since divine things cannot properly be comprehended by human speech. Divine Scripture, therefore, which on the surface of its words appears confused to the unlearned, seems manifest to those who know it; for unless it is read in that Spirit by which it is believed to have been infused into human beings, one by no means arrives at an understanding of it. The learned man who burns under the covering of the flesh and with vain desires reads it in one way; and the man of understanding, stripped of pleasures and truly inflamed by the love of God, reads it in another. Hence it is no wonder if men who savor carnal things do not understand the divine Scriptures, since, blinded by the pleasures of the flesh, they have never perceived the sweetness of the Spirit of God.

Just as, if you show to a boy learning the first elements of letters any written volume whose script is unlike that in his own little book, when he cannot read the writing he will at once cry out that the writing is bad and not rightly formed. In the same way, men who are wise only carnally approach the reading of the divine Scriptures; they do not grasp the things that belong to the divine Spirit, and, weighed down by vices and rashness, although they ought to have blamed their own ignorance and unworthiness, they censure as holy the Scriptures which they do not understand. For it is not permitted indiscriminately to all to interpret the divine Scriptures, lest the beast that touches the mountain be overwhelmed with stones.

Now there arise, in a disorderly order, many who have spent the whole span of their life on humane letters; and, having grown old, they interpret perversely the divine Scriptures which they never learned: they do not make them clear, but confuse them and discuss them according to their own sense. Hence all who do not understand the sacred Scriptures in that Spirit by which they were infused into those who wrote them have the veil of ignorance and rashness spread over their hearts, after the manner of the Jews; and from that source they often drink the poison of pernicious error, from which those who approach humbly in the Spirit of God have received the cup of salvation. For heavenly doctrine is not contained in the words of the Scriptures but in the meaning; not on the surface of utterances, but in the understanding; not in leaves adorned with ornament, but in the hidden place of mystical inspiration. Hence the divine pope Gregory says: Sacred Scripture far surpasses all the sciences of this world in its manner of speaking, because in one and the same discourse, while it narrates the text, it brings forth the mystery; and just as it refreshes the simple on the surface, so it exercises the wise in mystery. For it has openly that with which it may nourish little ones, and it keeps hidden that by which it may suspend the minds of the lofty in admiration of its sweetness, like a certain wondrous river in which both the simple little lamb may walk and the great elephant may swim. And Saint Augustine says on Genesis: Divine Scripture speaks in such a way that by its height it mocks the proud, by its depth it terrifies the attentive, by its power it feeds the great, and by its affability it nourishes the little.

For the authority of Sacred Scripture is greater than all the keenness of human talent. Therefore, in order that one may arrive at their true understanding, first of all the soul must be cleansed from every carnal affection; the help of divine goodness must be earnestly implored with humility, so that by his Spirit he may illuminate the understanding of the learner. For the necks of all powers must be bowed beneath the authority of the divine Scriptures; and, as the divine Jerome says, one must never flatter a human being in such a way that the truth of the holy Scriptures is neglected, which, throughout both Testaments, is true in the narration of deeds, right in admonitions, certain in promises, and terribly to be feared in threats.

For this reason it has not been given to all to be able to penetrate the mysteries of the divine Scriptures, but it is permitted only to those to whom love both continues study and the Spirit of God grants true understanding in purified minds. But whoever is filthy with the darkness of vices, whoever walks with a swollen mind proud: whoever doubts the truth of the Scriptures of God, whether in part or in whole, should never trust that he can arrive at an understanding of them. For the authority of Scripture itself says that unless you believe, you will not understand. It is the slowness of our intellect, and likewise the impurity of our desire, whenever we do not rightly understand the divine Scriptures: namely, when the veil of harmful preoccupation remains spread over our hearts, which does not permit us to come to true understanding. Hence it happens that we do not understand the sense which the Spirit has infused into the divine Scriptures, but, grasping the bare words of the writers, twist them into another sense. Indeed, if our minds were purified of carnal vices; if the intellect were exercised in the Scriptures through continual pursuit of sobriety; if that belief and reverence were applied to the holy Scriptures which their dignity requires, every diligent person would understand more clearly than daylight that there is nothing confused in the sacred readings, nothing discordant, nothing unsuitable, nothing absurd, or introduced without the most just reason. For all the passages of divine Scripture are full of mysteries; whenever something in them seems to have been placed obscurely, it has been done by divine providence, so that the diligent mind may have the necessary exercise of piety, and the faith of the simple may not lose the place of due reverence. Therefore it was not by chance, but by eternal providence, that he willed the holy Scriptures to be obscure in many places, so that they might abound in as many mysteries as senses in which, by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, they are expounded in Catholic fashion by the doctors. For, as holy Augustine says, the obscurity of divine Scripture is useful and very profitable, because it begets many judgments of truth and brings them forth into the light for human beings; for when one person, and another another, draws out this sense or that by expounding it in Catholic fashion, how lofty and profound it is becomes known. Hence let no man puffed up with secular learning suppose that he understands sacred Scripture unless he first lays aside the veil of pride and of every disordered concupiscence.

For secular learning is of greater value for exercising the intellect than for illuminating the understanding toward true wisdom. Therefore, without doubt, divine Scripture is both manifest and clear to minds purified through the continual exercise of the fear of God and frequent study in reading; to minds that are filthy and swollen with secular wisdom it seems confused and obscure. Hence he understands the holy Scriptures well and rightly who, with purified affection and frequent in their study, expounds them just as he did who wrote them. For if they are read in a spirit other than that by which he is believed to have inspired them to be written, the mind must necessarily be shut off altogether from true understanding. But when we encounter some discordance in them, let us understand that it is only of words, not of senses; and this arises in ordered fashion, not by chance, but by the providence of God, so that the mind, exercised longer in the Scriptures lest it become wholly sluggish, may be strengthened. For the counsel of God cannot be deceived; but the divine Scriptures were written by the counsel of his will; it follows necessarily that they are true and in no way false. They were human beings by whom the divine writings were handed down to us; certainly they wrote words used according to human custom, by which they might signify to posterity what that highest excellence of divinity willed to be known to mortals. Therefore now, you who, devoted to secular wisdom, attack the divine Scriptures, say: the Scripture of the New and Old Testament, which the Church has received and venerates as the true, authoritative, and holy Scripture of Christians, from where do you believe it was received? From God, or from human beings? If from God, why do you not believe it? For everyone who attacks Scripture which he believes to have been inspired by God most plainly resists the divine ordinance. But if it is from human beings, why do you hope for the eternal salvation promised in it, which man cannot give? Unless perhaps, madmen, you go on to say that all things are inventions, and that nothing that nothing remains after death and ashes, and that the mind together with the body passes into destruction, a profession that would show you to be no less mad than foolish. For if you truly believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, you will necessarily say that the divine Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit. But if, having joined the apostates in a reprobate mind, you say that they were fabricated by men, you impiously show how far you are from true wisdom, wandering in darkness. You plainly show yourselves to be ignorant and rash judges, since you condemn Scripture, which you do not understand. But because it is more familiar to you to despise wisdom than to learn it, it is not the business of this work to weary the mind any longer against the rashness of the ignorant. This one thing I want you to know: that no one understands unless he receives; but because you interpose the filth of your affections so that you may not receive, for that reason understanding of true wisdom is not possessed.

For God, the illuminator of all, deigns by grace to be present to those who, stripped of carnal desires, burn with the fire of inward love, who desire nothing in this world except God. To them the Spirit of God brings help by his presence; those whom he has found rooted in the love of truth and purged of every extraneous thing he leads into the knowledge of all things. For truly, to those who love God, all things are open, all things naked, all things manifest, since whoever through love beholds in the faith of Jesus Christ the one who creates and governs all things knows all that is necessary for his salvation. But, on the other hand, the illumination of God dwells very far from the slothful, wicked feasters, the envious, the greedy, incubi, the filthy, the lustful, murderers, the impious, the proud, and those alien to piety; it leaves them to the judgment of the avenging demon, who, driving in the sharp point of savage fire, afflicts the senses and the mind, and all the more arms and drives the impious to commit crimes, so that, guilty of a more shameful fault, they may also become liable to a more bitter punishment. Hence, entangled in worldly vices and desires, they are not only unable to penetrate the divine Scriptures with understanding, but, neglecting themselves, they do not even know themselves.

Since, therefore, sacred Scripture is the perfect work of God, Caesar, we must so establish the mind that we believe it to be true, right, complete, solid, divinely inspired, and most abundantly sufficient for all who understand it for the confirmation of the Christian faith. For indeed, unless divine Scripture is believed to be true, holy, perfect in all things, and complete, the Christian faith would be deprived of its foundation. Therefore every Christian must take the greatest care not to overstep the bounds of piety by examining the divine Scriptures more than is fitting, because the author of the Scriptures is not man but the Holy Spirit; whoever struggles against the integrity of the Scriptures of God is proved to resist his ordinance. Scripture, moreover, by God’s ordering, is usefully interwoven in its figurative text with parables, enigmas, likenesses, and comparisons, so that readers may be exercised toward understanding, and, once its inward sweetness has been tasted, the mind may be strengthened toward piety.

And so, if with purified minds we attend to the sense of the Scriptures, not the words, we shall understand how rightly and properly all things have been ordered. For it was not fitting that the sacred Scriptures, in which knowledge of the divine majesty is handed down, should be so plain and manifest that they could be understood everywhere by all; for this knowledge is set forth to be understood only by the good and holy, not also by evil, filthy, and polluted minds. Hence it is written: “The beast that touches the mountain shall be overwhelmed with stones.” What is designated here by the beast, if not human beings who, in imitation of brutes, live without the love of God in the pleasures of the flesh? And what is expressed by the mountain, if not the height of the divine Scriptures? When the beast approaches this holy mountain, it is overwhelmed with stones, because a man impure in mind and weak in faith, who strives to search out the height of the divine Scriptures without a master to teach him, is struck down by various and pernicious errors, as though by stones.

is wounded by blows as though by stones. For just as all things are clean to the clean, so all things seem profane to the profane. God therefore placed his hiding place in the height of the Scriptures, which is so inaccessible and closed to the reprobate that it nevertheless always lies plainly open to the saints.

But why God did not make Holy Scripture sufficient and plain for all things that concern the Christian faith, we shall answer briefly. There are two things which the Most High provided for believers for the confirmation of the Christian faith: namely, the Church and Scripture, so that what is not expressed clearly enough in the one may be more fully declared by the other. Hence, if we find anything in the Holy Scriptures concerning the rules of faith expressed less sufficiently, we at once have recourse to the Church; and where the Church has need of saving instruction for piety, it immediately turns to Scripture. From this it follows that neither would the Church have authority without Scripture, nor Scripture credibility without the Church, so that the judgment of the two may be one. For Augustine says: I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Church compelled me. But John Gerson says: I would not believe the Church unless the Gospel compelled me. Thus the Church confirms Holy Scripture, and is itself confirmed in like manner by Scripture. The Church supplies whenever Scripture is lacking; and if at any time the Church is in doubt, it has recourse to the counsel of Scripture. For there is one Holy Spirit of God, who founded the Church in the faith of Jesus Christ; the very same Almighty one alone inspired Scripture. And this is the threefold cord that is not easily broken: where divine Scripture is joined through the Holy Spirit to the authority of the Church, to such a degree that the Church commends Scripture, and Scripture in turn commends the Church. Therefore, O Caesar of unconquered majesty, as it seems to me, we have assigned a sufficient cause for the proposed question: since, if all things in the Holy Scriptures that concern the piety of faith were plainly expressed, holy mother Church would not seem to be of such great authority, and the merit of saving obedience would in large part be emptied out.

At the same time I think sufficient answer has been given to the principal question, where certain persons suppose Holy Scripture in very many places to be confused and imperfect; yet if they read it with due purity of mind, they would certainly find it perfect and sound. Great is the authority of the Catholic Church, which alone, in doubtful matters concerning the faith, has the right to interpret the Scriptures; to it the necks of all powers must be subjected. If anyone, with rash daring, has departed from its definition, he has denied the Gospel of Christ. There is one congregation of the faithful, the holy Church, mother of Christians, outside whose unity no one will be saved; and even if it sometimes appears weak in morals, nevertheless, always constant in faith, it has never erred, while the loving-kindness of Christ remains intact.

Question Five — Concerning the Reprobate

Hence no one among mortals is good unless, by the counsel of his own will, he is aided by the grace of the merciful God; and no one is evil unless, of his own accord, he is deprived of grace because of the obstacle of sin. By uprightness of will, however, we are made like the good spirits, if we prove the piety of the faith that we have in Christ by holy and necessary works. And just as the consummation of a good will makes good men equal to angelic spirits, so the perversity of the impious renders them like demons. Hence evil and perverse men, the more they have been depraved by the malice of their own will, the more they become like demons in disposition.

But likeness introduces the familiarity of friendship, from which mutual confidence is gradually generated. From the confidence of the lesser toward the greater there arises command, whether true or feigned by cunning. Thus if any command of depraved men over demons appears to exist, it arises from the greatness of depravity: namely, when their disposition is depraved to such a degree that, by a reprobate will, they either surpass or equal the malice of the demons who join themselves to them. For demons are not all equal in malice or intelligence; rather, one is much more cunning than another in quickness of understanding, and far worse in depraved affection. For those who, falling from the high seats, inhabit the hollows and caves of the earth are certainly duller than the rest, to such a degree that they fear swords and rods and seem to be admonished by the threats of men who terrify them, as can be observed in those whom we call energumens. But demons who dwell farther removed from the earth are subtler in nature and meet with men more rarely.

Men full of malice, however, the more they have advanced in perversity of will, the more they become like demons; and once admitted by them into familiarity, they thereafter become bold and receive command over the demons whose familiarity they use, not by violent power but by feigned pretense. For demons, in order to keep in their depravity those men whom they have once received into surrender as willing subjects, gladly submit themselves to them as though moved by a simulated dominion; and what they do voluntarily, they pretend they are compelled to do in obedience. For no one obtains true command over demons except him whom faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, through the merit of holiness, has made acceptable and a friend to God. For thus Scripture says of those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus: “And he gave them power over all demons.”

Evil men, therefore, command demons, whom malevolence has made like to them, likeness has made familiar, and familiarity has made their own and subject. It is as if some servant of a great prince, born in a humble station, as often happens, and joined to him by long familiarity, were said to command him, since he obtains from him without contradiction everything he asks, so that he himself seems rather to rule his lord than to be ruled by him. According to this likeness, evil and reprobate men, because they are admitted into the demons’ familiarity and become very bold through more prolonged confidence, receive over them a simulated, not to say familiar, command, which they have deserved by the likeness of their most depraved will. Hence whatever they have demanded from demons who join with them by an implicit or explicit compact, they receive, unless at times, being forbidden by divine ordinance, the demons cannot provide what is sought. Yet they do not thus join themselves indiscriminately to all reprobate and evil persons, but only to those with whom, through the intervention of a compact, they have entered into certain agreements: such as women who are witches, who have rendered homage to the devil, and those invokers of demons whom the common people call by the usual word necromancers.

¶ There are two kinds of men who can lawfully command demons.

¶ The first, indeed, is of those men who, beloved by God by the merit of holiness, have received from him the power of trampling the head of the ancient serpent, such as the apostles and their followers and disciples were in the primitive Church; concerning them the Lord speaks in the holy Gospel: “In my name they shall cast out demons,” and “They shall take up serpents.”

¶ The second kind is of those men to whom, by reason of order in the Church of God, it is granted that they may, by the power of the ministry received, drive demons out of human bodies. And this ministry is entrusted to exorcists in the Church of God when, that is, they are ordained by apostolic authority.

¶ Again, there are two kinds of men who desire to command demons; and the fact that they presume to do this unlawfully is shown by their most wicked conditions.

¶ The first kind, most pernicious, is of witches who enter into pacts with demons and, after a solemn profession has first been made, hand themselves over to some demon under the right of ownership and perpetual service. What great evils this most harmful kind of people commits in your empire, most wise Caesar, no one can express. For, first of all, denying God, the faith of Christ, and sacred baptism, they offer themselves in mind and body to demons; they weaken, injure, and kill men and beasts by their malefices. There is no disease that, God permitting, they cannot bring on, because when they present themselves to demons as servants in the observance of the contracted agreement, they dare whatever they wish in association with them. Hence they are nowhere to be tolerated, but rather are to be utterly exterminated in every place, as God, the creator of all, commands: “You shall not suffer witches to live.” Some witches summon demons by charms; others entice them by prayers and sacrifices; the rest, provoking them by unspeakable things and ceremonies, draw them into the aid of their impiety. It is therefore no wonder that witches seem to command demons, since by the impiety of a perverse will they have been made like them, and by mutual agreement familiar and subject to them.

¶ The second kind of depraved men who wish to command demons is of those ...those whom we commonly call necromancers. They profess arts full of execrations, by which they promise that they can summon demons into a circle, or show them openly and visibly enclosed in a crystal or some other vessel. These most pernicious men, full of falsehood and superstitions, commit such great evils as no good man could imagine. For in order to entice demons into obedience to themselves, they very often use the foulest sacrifices and enter into an explicit pact with them. They carry about many various little books full of filth, impiety, and falsehood, falsely inscribed with the names of ancient philosophers and sages; by displaying these they deceive many unwary and curious people and draw them with themselves into the demons’ pit. They promise great and utterly incredible things, the hearing of which keeps men suspended in wonder at the falsehood. By rings, pentacles, images, exorcisms, and conjurations, they say that they can constrain malignant demons so that they appear visibly in a circle, or in a crystal, or in some other receptacle, and answer distinctly to all questions asked. All indeed promise this, but in our times very few are found whom the malignant spirits obey in this way, even in evil matters, since God, for a most just reason, does not permit it: lest human curiosity, prone to novelties, after despising the religion of Christ, should in necessity seek help from demons. But all those whom malignant spirits, summoned by the conjurations of necromancers, obey have without doubt passed into fellowship with them by an explicit or implicit pact. Yet the number of the rest is greater: those whom the malignant spirits disdain to obey, although they do not fear to occupy themselves always in profane necromantic arts. And because especially in our times iniquity has begun to abound and charity has grown cold in many, these accursed and most deceitful men have grown too strong; and although they are despised by demons, nevertheless, persevering in their most pernicious doctrines, they deceive many.

Believe me, Caesar, this most deceitful kind of men is very pernicious to your sacred empire, and therefore, no less than the brood of witches, must be utterly exterminated. They promise great things and lie in everything. Indeed, all the things promised in their books are empty and false, and they furnish believers with nothing other than tricks, frauds, and the most subtle deceptions. And if at times they seem to produce what they have promised, it is manifest to everyone that this happens only by the cooperation of demons; fellowship with them must be fled no less than the most savage torments of hell. For demons very often come to these necromantic operations, and, so that they may keep their invokers obstinate in the treachery they have begun, they grant them, if they can, the things asked. Sometimes, however, when invoked by conjurations, they disdain to appear, and nevertheless they have carried away the minds of those who invoke them.

There is also another kind of men, no less foolish than superstitious: namely those who do not wish to have any commerce with demons, and yet use in their vain operations things appropriated to demons and therefore utterly illicit. For they think that great and hidden power resides in characters, and so they commit various errors against the faith of Christ. But because this is not the time to recount their madness, let us pursue our proposed subject. Why good and just men do not obtain command over demons must be stated briefly. Just as likeness of wills makes evil and impious men equal to demons, so unlikeness of wills renders good and just men wholly contrary to them. But among things contrary and unlike there can be no familiarity; rather, continual opposition and hatred are found. Where, however, no familiarity contracted by likeness of wills is found, neither can there be confidence of one toward the other, nor any mutual concurrence in the working of wonders. Nor should you, Caesar, boastNor do you, Caesar, glorious man, since you are a great ruler and prince of men, admit as familiar to you anyone whose character is altogether contrary and unlike to yours, and who continually resists your will. But good and upright men, because they always withstand the most depraved will of demons, can in no way pass over into fellowship with them; they neither wish nor consent to be familiar with them, but with all their strength flee from and detest meeting them. And therefore they do not obtain that fictitious command over them of which we have spoken. For nowhere is there secure familiarity where no likeness of wills has preceded it, nor can there be concord among opposites.

Yet demons do not obey all evil and reprobate persons indiscriminately, but only those with whom they are joined by pacts and services. And when invoked they willingly come to those whom they cannot otherwise keep faithful, although they lie that they are compelled. It is therefore not to be wondered at, most excellent Caesar, that malignant spirits sometimes seem to comply with depraved and perverse men, whom, as we have said, both malevolence and destructiveness toward the human race have made alike and concordant. But let it be far from every Christian to wish, through a depraved likeness of will, to command demons, because if anyone in this life begins to have fellowship with malignant spirits, in the life to come he will burn with them without end.

But why are good and just men unable to command the holy angels of God, into whose likeness of good will they have passed? I think the solution to this question could easily be given from what has been said above, if the difference of intellects is recalled to mind. For although there are many men established in the Church of God whose righteousness benefits many unto salvation, nevertheless in our times very few advance so far that, because of the merit of sanctity, they are either feared by demons or received by angels into the fellowship of familiarity. Hence it happens that the men of our age neither command malignant spirits by the merit of sanctity, nor deserve to be familiar with the holy angels. But if any have advanced to that degree of sanctity by which, performing miracles in the Church, the saints once advanced, then they can powerfully command demons and have familiar fellowship with the blessed spirits. For it is certain that holy men beloved by God, in the primitive Church of Christians, once bestowed greater benefits upon mortals through the cooperation of good spirits than the impiety of depraved men could ever have inflicted as evil deeds through the ministry of demons. For whoever is a true worshipper of God and has become like the holy angels can do many wondrous things by prayers.

ON THE POWER

Question Six — On the Power of Witches

The question of your most unconquered majesty was this: whence comes this so great power in witches, by which they can accomplish so many varied and wondrous things, even in a single hour, such things and so many as no good person could do in his whole life? To this question, if we wish to answer briefly, we must necessarily say that all power is from the Lord God, without whom no creature can do anything. For Christ says in the holy Gospel: Without me you can do nothing. Hence it is manifest that every power of doing anything is granted to human beings by the Lord God and from no other source, whether they do good or evil.

Hence the most holy prelate Augustine says: The will of God is the first and highest cause of all bodily appearances and motions; and nothing happens in this most vast and immense commonwealth of the whole creature, visibly, which is not either commanded or permitted from the inner, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme emperor, according to the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments. Therefore, Caesar, there is no doubt that that power of witches, by which they produce wondrous and horrible effects through the cooperation of demons, comes from the Lord God. is granted by the Lord God, whose will no one can resist, and without whose influence a man cannot even move his hand. For the holy doctors conclude that neither demons nor witches can do anything, whether to harm a person or an animal, unless God himself wills it, consents, and grants the power, so that they may do what they have already resolved upon with a perverse will. Unless God consents and wills, no creature can do anything; otherwise, if anything could happen when he did not will and consent to it, it would necessarily follow that God was weak, since he could not prevent what, though unconquered, he would be forced to permit to happen.

But since every human being, insofar as he is a creature, depends on God, he can do nothing without the will of him from whom he has both the will and the power. Whatever, therefore, witches do is done with God permitting it; without his will they can do nothing, because unless God has granted it, they will obtain neither from themselves nor from demons the ability to do what they wish. And so all power is from the Lord God, in whom all things exist and are moved as in the first cause of all things; for from him from whom we received freedom of choice, from him also we have the power to do what we will.

But since the understanding of witches is very confused, they perpetrate the evils they do not by human art, but by the cooperation of demons, whom nature has made subtle and long experience has made swift in producing wonders. For the effects of witches are not caused by such means as they use for witchcraft, such as heads of the dead, toads, serpents, characters, images, and things similar to these, but by the devil who established these signs; since he is most proud, he desires in all things to be seen as comparable to God. For just as God once instituted certain sacraments in his Church, which, when worthily administered and with him assisting, signify and produce a saving effect, while he himself who instituted them works salvation, so also the devil, who desires nothing more than to be regarded as equal to God, instituted certain signs as if they were sacraments. When he is invoked by them by those to whom he is allied by covenants and pacts, the malignant operator assists; and as often as God has permitted it, he effects the evil that is asked. If God has not permitted it, he does absolutely nothing. For indeed, of all the effects of necromancers and witches the devil is the operator; by the application of the means which he himself first established to the subject matter, he produces the desired work, sometimes really, sometimes only apparently.

But women witches, who by now, with a depraved will and consent, have passed into fellowship with demons through pacts, receive from them certain marks and symbolic signs, by which, when summoned, the demons immediately come. Nothing in these destructive operations of demons is stronger than the foolish credulity of witches, which is increased by pacts and vows, since the firmer the faith they have placed either in the demons or in their signs, the swifter the operation they attain with the demons cooperating. For the excessively savage depravity of the witches’ will in a certain way turns them into madness; when this has preoccupied the mind, the demons at once apply themselves to those who are raving, and, invited by pacts and signs, with God permitting it, they supply the effect of the petition to the women in their frenzy.

For Plato related something similar in the book On Poetic Frenzy, saying: just as bacchant women, when of unsound mind, draw honey and milk from rivers, but when of sound mind they cannot draw them. Their spirit, carried outside itself into fellowship with an evil demon, effects this. We know by experience that witches at times have drawn butter from rushing rivers, which can in no way happen except by the ministry of a demon. In a similar way, when they have been brought into hatred of some person or animal, and sigh for its destruction, they are driven by a most grievous fury, thinking of nothing in their mind except revenge. They take up the things known and familiar to them for witchcraft, invoke demons, and show the signs established by them together with the characters; and what they cannot accomplish by their own power, they obtain by the demons’ ministry.

But another person, who is not subject to demons by pact and surrender, even if he knows the things suitable for witchcraft together with the method of operation, and although he displays the signs, nevertheless rarely achieves the effect the effect, because he is not counted among the familiar associates of demons. For the devil, puffed up with pride, imitates the church of Christ to such a degree that, just as one who has not been ordained cannot consecrate the body of Christ, however much he may utter the words of consecration, so too a demon, however much he may be invoked and however much signs or characters may be shown to him, either never or only rarely comes to the aid of someone whom he does not know to be subject to him by pact. For if he came indiscriminately to all who invoked him, without pacts having been interposed, he would not possess so many witches dedicated to him by right of ownership.

Hence it is that many who are given over to profane arts, laboring with dreadful conjurations to summon demons to a circle, to a mirror, or to any other receptacles, obtain no effect, because either the command of God stands in the way, or the devil despises the curious man who has not been dedicated to him by homage. For three things are required for witchcraft, without which it is agreed that none is perpetrated: a witch raging in mind and with depraved will; also the cooperation of a familiar demon; and, before all things, divine permission. But if one of these does not concur, the witchcraft cannot be perpetrated. For if God did not permit it, neither the devil nor the witch could do anything. And if the devil did not come to the aid of the wicked woman’s will, she would perpetrate no witchcraft. Again, if the witch were lacking, the devil would in no way complete the witchcraft. For the devil uses the will of the raging witch as an artisan uses an instrument for working; without it he could not inflict the witchcraft.

And just as demons differ from one another in power and in the sharpness of their subtlety, so the power of witches is not one and the same in all of them, but differs in individuals according as demons of subtler or grosser nature come together with them. For there are many kinds of demons, and they are separated from one another by fixed degrees, by reason of the places into which, when they fell at the beginning, they were thrust down. The first kind of demons indeed is called fiery, because it wanders about the upper air and is never plunged down to the lower regions before the day of judgment; rather, remaining continually beneath the lunar regions, they have no commerce with human beings on earth. That they remain beneath the moon, Saint Augustine testifies in the work On the Christian Struggle, saying as follows: Demons do not dwell in heaven, where the sun and stars are, but all pass their time beneath the lunar region.

Moved by this, as I think, Apuleius said that demons are fiery animals, because Aristotle confirmed that in burning furnaces certain small animals have often been seen flying about, furnished with little wings, which spend their whole life in fire, since they arise with the fire and are extinguished with it, and, vanishing, return to their own place from which they had come. They have no association with acts of witchcraft, because, since they dwell in fire, on account of their subtlety they cannot take on a gross or airy body.

The second kind is called aerial, because it wanders in the air and dwells near us. These, indeed, can descend to the lower regions, and, with bodies assumed from denser air, sometimes appear visibly to human beings. God permitting, they often disturb the air; they stir up thunder and storms; and all together they conspire for the ruin of the human race. In the manner of human beings they are moved by the affections of passions, especially pride and envy, and they are driven by continual disturbances; they are not clothed with a solid body, nor do they remain in one place. Nor do they all have one form, but many, and they often change them according to the variety of the affections by which they either come when summoned by the spells of witches, or are driven by disturbance to do harm. For they have an altogether violent and furious disposition, full of disturbances; hence, when strongly wronged and disturbed, they very often contrive sudden ambushes. While they make their incursions, they partly wish to remain hidden, and partly inflict violence. Witches of these demons Witches, supported by the cooperation of these demons, are more powerful in doing harm in proportion as they have obtained the concurrence of one higher in their order. In the Life of Saint Anthony, Saint Athanasius said that the air is full of demons; Mercury, the Thrice-Greatest, had also said this earlier, namely that no part of the world is without the presence of demons. The holy bishop Ambrose also says: The world is full of holy powers because it is full of wickednesses. Hence the Platonists have handed down that demons flying in the air, like very dense fiery snow, are visible to those who desire it, if for some time, while the sun is shining, they keep their gaze directed toward heaven with eyes not beaten back. But I do not know whether the object in the air is caused by a real consistency, or whether the interrupted motion of the eyes presents false images; nevertheless, not without slight damage to the sense, I have made trial of the things promised.

The third kind, however, we call terrestrial demons; we do not in the least doubt that they fell from heaven to earth according to their deserts. Concerning these, the most holy bishop and martyr of Christ, Theophorus, once called Ignatius, wrote thus in a certain letter to the Ephesians: There is nothing better than to have peace, in which every weapon of the aerial and likewise the terrestrial spirits is made void. Of these demons, some move about in forests and groves, laying ambushes for hunters; others live in open fields and make travelers wander at night; some dwell in hidden places and caves; the rest, less frenzied and disturbed than the others, delight to dwell with human beings in the dark. They are not led by one affection but by various ones, since some are less depraved than others, although all are full of evil disturbances. Of these, some rejoice in terrifying human beings by illusions alone; others desire to draw their hearers into admiration of themselves by predictions of future things. Some, however, labor with this whole effort: that they may terrify, injure, or kill human beings disturbed by irrational frenzy or raging with melancholy, as we have learned by experience has often happened. Hence Saint John Chrysostom, in the third book On Providence to the monk Stagirius, says: In every diabolical action, the magnitude of grief is more powerful for doing harm, because whomever a demon overcomes, he overcomes through grief. If you take that away, no one will be able to be harmed by a demon. This kind of demons, however, is rarely familiar to witches, because of the inconstancy of their affections and the levity by which they delight more in terrifying many people than in being subject to the command of one little woman. Yet sometimes, as they promise to madwomen, they dwell in glass, or in crystal, or in a mirror, and, when stirred up by incantations, they give answers to women; and if someone coming on the road has spoken ill of them, they announce it beforehand. And this kind of witches sometimes differs greatly from the rest, since what the others make infirm by sorcery, these women promise to cure. But because for the most part they repel sorcery by sorcery, every Christian is forbidden by the Church to have recourse to them.

The fourth kind of demons is called aquatic, because, immersing itself in waters, it dwells around lakes and rivers: full of wrath, disturbed, restless, and deceitful. It stirs up storms at sea, sinks ships into the deep, and takes the lives of many in the waters. And whenever these demons assume a visible body, they more often appear in the female sex, and are seen more rarely in the male, because they move about in damp places and follow a softer course of life, nor can they easily assume a lowly form according to the custom of the others. Long ago antiquity named the Naiads and Nereids, nymphs of the waters, not in the male sex but in the female. But others are commonly called aquatic women, that is, wasser frawen. Those who live in drier, somewhat arid places, whenever they appear bodily visible to human beings, transform themselves into men. They also assume the forms of various They assume the forms of beasts according as they are touched by various affections. But the holy angels, since they are never altered by affection, always appear uniformly in male form. For nowhere do we read it written that a good spirit was seen in the form of a woman or of any beast, but always in male appearance. Demons, however, have rather often been seen around rivers and springs in the appearance of women: sometimes dancing, sometimes letting down their hair in the manner of a woman, and sometimes speaking with human beings and carrying out various mockeries. And this kind of demons has not customarily had commerce with witches.

The fifth kind is called subterranean, because it dwells in caves and caverns and in the remote hollows of mountains. And these demons are very evil in disposition. They especially attack those who dig wells and mines, and those who seek treasures hidden in the earth, being most ready for the destruction of the human race. They make openings in the earth, stir up flame-vomiting winds, and shake the foundations of buildings. Sometimes at night, coming out of the mountains in troops, they lead marvelous and astonishing dances in the fields, as though fearing the command of a single leader. At a sign they suddenly vanish and return to their hiding places. At times the sound of bells is heard among them, and sometimes they falsely claim that they are the spirits of men departed from life. They seek nothing more than the fear and wonder of human beings. Hence we have found that they have sometimes led certain simpler people into their hiding places in the mountains, showing astonishing spectacles to those who marveled, and they falsely claim that dwellings of the blessed are there, and that they are friends of the living.

Among these demons, too, some are brooding guardians of treasures, which the avarice of mortals has hidden in the earth; and lest they come again into human use, they remove them, steal them, guard them, and sometimes transfer them from place to place. And this kind of demons has not customarily had any commerce with witch-women.

The sixth kind of demons is called light-fleeing, because they especially abhor and detest light: for they never appear by day, nor can they assume a body in any other way than at night. This is the business that walks about in darkness: a kind of demons that is inscrutable and utterly dark, agitated by cold passions, malicious, restless, and disturbed, which violently oppresses people it encounters in the night hours. Rather often, God permitting, it kills certain people either by its breath or by its touch. This kind of demons does not associate with witches, nor can it be constrained by charms, because it flees both light and human voices, and every disturbance as well.

The aerial kind is especially accustomed to attend the sorceries of women, since it is more subtle than all the others and of the most audacious rashness. Some of the terrestrial demons also, as has been said, serve witches; yet because they are held in a lower rank, they are by no means able to bring about those greater sorceries. It is therefore plainly established that the whole power of witches, by which they do such wondrous things, is granted to demons by the Lord God within limits; and when he does not permit it, they accomplish nothing.

ON DIVINE PERMISSION. Seventh Question.

Question Seventh

The seventh question of your most serene majesty was this: Why does almighty God, since he is just and the avenger of evils, permit such great sorceries to be done for the destruction of the human race, by which not only sinners but also many innocent people perish, grievously tormented?

To this question, I remember that I answered in this way some time ago, when I had been placed before your majesty. Almighty God is just and upright, kind and merciful. Whatever he permits, he permits justly, because he is just, and there is no iniquity with him; rather, he permits all things that happen in true judgment. Therefore, when it is asked why God permits evil things to be done, we answer: He permits them for this reason: because he is just. Let the answer we have given not seem absurd to your majesty, O Caesar, since it in no way prejudices divine goodness that he permits evils to be done for a most just reason; rather, indeed, it would prejudice it if he did not permit evils to be done in the present world. For truly, if he did not permit evils to be done, man would now be unable to sin; he would certainly be impeccable, which does not belong to his nature, to which the Creator of all gave free will from the beginning. For since man is a creature and not the Creator, he is necessarily capable of being turned toward good as well as toward evil; his being depends on the supreme maker of all creatures, just as every caused thing depends on the cause of its own being. But to create has been left to God alone, who is incorruptible and everlasting; everything corruptible, however, necessarily fails, but is preserved by the goodness of the Creator so long as it does not lose the influence of its cause. Hence it neither could nor ought to have happened that man should be created impeccable by the condition of his nature, a thing that only God, the maker of all, naturally enjoys, who is immutable and everlasting. Whenever, indeed, it is granted to man that he seems unable to sin, freedom of choice is not removed, nor is the possibility simply taken away, but the will is confirmed in good. And whenever this gift is conferred on a creature, it is a gift of grace, not of nature. For Scripture says: God from the beginning created man and left him in the hand of his own counsel. For, properly speaking, it cannot be that mortal man, conceived in original displeasure, should both have free will and be unable to commit sin. For the most holy bishop Augustine says: The first freedom of the will was to be able to sin; the last, in glory, will much more be to be unable to sin. Therefore, if man could not sin, he would not have mastery over his own will. Hence, although almighty God does not will sin, yet he justly permits men to sin and to do evil, so that, while freedom of choice remains, both the virtue of a good work may receive its reward, and voluntary depravity may receive the evil it has done. For no one either does good or sins unwillingly. Therefore almighty God justly permits men to sin and to do evil, since he granted them freedom of choice from the beginning. There are, moreover, many reasons long ago assigned by the holy doctors why the Almighty permits such great sorceries to be done through the cooperation of demons; of these we shall necessarily make brief mention in order.

The first is so that the excellence of divine power may be made manifest, for he alone is immutable and above every ordinance of law. Every mutable creature has no comparison with the immutable Creator. Hence in Numbers we read: God is not like a man, that he should lie, nor like a son of man, that he should be changed. In Isaiah also it is said: God is faithful, without iniquity, just and upright. In the book of Tobit it is also written: You are just, O Lord, and all your judgments are true, and all your ways are mercy, truth, and judgment. And in the book of holy Job we read: Impiety is far from God, and iniquity from the Almighty. For he will render to a man his work, and according to the ways of each he will restore to them. Therefore every man who rightly understands his own ignorance and weakness plainly recognizes how much he is nothing in comparison with his Creator. For God justly permits man to sin, both so that freedom of choice may be continued and so that the excellence of the great God may become known to human beings.

The second reason is so that the inscrutable wisdom of God may become known to mortals, since he knows how to draw good out of our evils, when he makes one person’s sin become another person’s merit for the increase of virtue. For if he did not permit evil to be done, which of us would understand good? For God makes and orders good; evils, however, he does not make, but he disposes that those done by the impious should not come about in a disordered way. Nor does the malice of men impede the will of God, nor can man do anything that God does not permit.

The third cause, indeed, is that the Almighty permits sorceries to be done so that he may manifest his most merciful goodness toward those who have sinned and done penance, which he could in no way show if he did not permit the creature to sin. For if there were no sinner, God could not be one who has mercy. But since we all offend in many things, everywhere God finds something to remit; everywhere the guilty person appears, in whom the kindly Creator may show his mercy. Hence the holy bishop Augustine: If the disease were slight, the physician would be despised and would not be sought; if the physician were not sought, the disease would not come to an end. Therefore where sin abounded, grace also abounded, which alone distinguishes the redeemed from the lost, whom the mass of perdition, drawn from the origin of creation, gathers into one. Therefore the mercy of the Lord is over all his works.

The fourth reason for divine permission is that the justice of the Creator may be declared toward those who have sinned and have not done penance, since if all did good and no one sinned, God’s justice would have nothing to punish. Therefore, so that justice may have a place, by divine permission the creature sins. For the Lord is just, who will render to each according to the work of his will.

The fifth reason is the dignity of the human condition: because if God did not permit man to sin, he would seem worse than brute beasts, which, with no violence driving them, freely use the motions of nature. For even if brute beasts lack reason, nevertheless they have a free motion of nature which they follow; in comparison with this, man would seem of a lower condition if he did not have free choice of the will. But God permitted free will to man, over which neither kings nor princes rule.

The sixth reason is the praise of the merit of steadfastness in human virtue, since we praise a just man for this reason: that although he could have transgressed, he did not transgress, but, with the grace of God assisting him, remained in the steadfastness of a good will.

The seventh reason why almighty God permits demons to do such great evil deeds through the agency of witches is that those who, scorning truth, delight in falsehood may, seduced by the devil, the inventor of falsehood, be utterly deceived.

For it is fitting that enchanters and witches, who despise the saving teachings of Christ, should all, deceived by demons, be plunged down to hell to be punished forever. They seek aid from demons, the enemies of the whole human race, and they despise the Savior of the world, whom alone they ought to have adored. For it is just that he who, deserting truth by his own spontaneous will, adheres to falsehood should be cast headlong by the devil into destruction.

The eighth cause is the manifestation of divine power, whose might and virtue are over every creature. Indeed, when almighty God sometimes permits great things to the devil and denies certain small things, it is apparent how weak the enemy of the human race is, and subject to the divine majesty in all things. Whatever he does, he does with God permitting it. Therefore the first cause of all, on account of which almighty God permits evil deeds to be done, is justice, by which he preserves in inviolable order the freedom that he once bestowed upon the creature from the beginning. But because the power of every creature, depending on its Creator, is restricted and limited, it is manifest that he does not wish the devil to be able to do everything, nor man, however depraved in will. The will indeed is free, but power is limited by fixed and necessary degrees. For if demons could do everything they wish, nothing in human affairs would remain safe, but they would overthrow everything.

The history of holy Job demonstrates by a manifest example the bound power of demons: Satan did not dare to tempt him beyond what had been permitted to him by divine dispensation. For no one in the present world, however just or strong, could resist the fury of demons if they were always able, according to their own choice, to use free power to do harm. But before the Lord’s passion they used a greater freedom of power than afterward; but when Christ tasted death for us on the altar of the cross, their power was thereafter greatly diminished, as the Savior says in the Gospel: Now the prince of the world “will be cast out.” For indeed Christ’s humility and the perseverance of the saints have greatly restrained the boldness of demons, so that they can rightly be called inciters of evils, but by no means compellers. Nor would the devil gain strength against us unless he received his strength from our sins. Hence Scripture admonishes us, saying, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” And again, “Do not give place to the devil.”

Therefore, to bring the discussion to a conclusion for understanding the question proposed, why God permits so many acts of harmful magic to be done, I believe the reasons have been sufficiently made clear. For even if the will of demons is always wicked, their power can never be unjust, since what it wickedly wills it has from its own choice, but what it can wickedly do it has from God alone. And these things have been said insofar as they concern those who do evil.

But why does almighty God permit demons, through the agency of sorcerers, to harm people who have been baptized in the name of the holy Trinity and faithfully believe in his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ? For if they could harm only the evil, the perverse, and unbelievers in body and goods, but were restrained from approaching and harming the good and faithful, the permission would rightly seem to be a just judgment. But now the good and innocent are more often made sick by the harmful magic of demons, and sometimes are even deprived of life, to pass over in silence the loss of temporal goods that those bewitched often suffer. Many are troubled as to why the Almighty permits these things, he who permits nothing unjustly.

For this proposed question, I shall set out in order, as briefly as I can, the necessary reasons, received from no others than the ancient and Catholic doctors. The first reason is the testing of Christians’ faith and the proving of their integrity: so that, when scourged by the harmful magic of demons, they may learn in the sufferings of the flesh what faith and love toward God they have hidden in the mind. In prosperity it is not difficult to be long-suffering; but in adversity, with humble patience, to await help from the Savior of the faithful is not the mark of the soft, but of the strong and of truly faithful Christians. In his tribulation most holy Job learned how great a constancy of faith toward God he possessed, he who before, in tranquility, had preserved his piety without the dart of temptation.

Here at the same time it must be noted that those whom the harmful magic of demons or men has in any way made sick, and who, in order to recover health, either approach or consult any sorcerers and enchanters, whether by themselves or through others, act against the precepts of God and the Church; and they have neither true faith in God nor love. For they prefer the health of mortal flesh to God, and seek salvation not from Christ but from the devil and his minister. They prefer to live healthy, but unhappily, in the name of the devil, rather than to suffer a little here for the love of Christ and afterward rejoice with him forever.

But one who does not approach sorcerers because God has forbidden it, preferring to live with observance of God’s commandments in poverty and sickness rather than against God in riches and bodily health, truly loves God and rightly preserves the integrity of the Christian faith.

Most sacred Caesar, people corrupt in mind and reprobate with respect to the faith must not be tolerated among Christians: those who cure the bewitched by harmful magic; those who reveal thefts and adulteries through the ministry of demons; those who foretell future things by inspecting stones or mirrors. I beg you, do not listen to those who, ignorant of the divine laws, think that ministers of demons of this kind are useful to your rule because they know how to dissolve acts of harmful magic by harmful magic. For that destructive cure of bodies brings about the death of souls, and makes men withdraw from God, the creator of all things, and adhere to impious apostate demons, with whom after death they will be damned forever.

The second reason why almighty God permits the innocent to be harmed by harmful magic is the increase of merits: namely, so that, once their patience has been proved in tribulation, they may merit a worthier crown of glory in heaven. For, as holy Augustine says, a man is unknown to himself as to what he can bear and what he cannot bear. Sometimes he fears that he cannot bear what nevertheless he can. When temptation comes, like a kind of interrogator, a man is discovered by himself, who before, being hidden, did not know himself. The holy arch-apostle Peter, before temptation came upon him, was hidden both from himself and from others, namely that he was heedless and weak; it came, and the weakness that had lain hidden appeared. Therefore temptation is the greatest proving of men, as sacred Scripture bears witness: the furnace proves the potter’s vessels, and the temptation of tribulation proves just men. Patience is easy in prosperity, when no adversity strikes the mind. But many are the tribulations of the just; yet from them all our Lord Jesus Christ will deliver them.

The third reason for divine permission is the preservation of humility, so that the faithful and just man may always fear God and never presume upon his own strength or justice. Hence Scripture says of the reprobate: They are not in the labor of men, and with men they will not be scourged. Therefore pride held them; they were covered with their iniquity and impiety; their iniquity came forth as if from fatness. It belongs to the mercy of God that he sometimes permits good and just men to be shaken by adversities, whom he knows cannot be humbled in prosperous circumstances. For tribulation has made many humble whom favorable circumstances would have made proud. Finally, the fearful imagining of malefices makes a good man fear his God and diligently call upon his aid. But let no one, proud and presuming upon his own powers, think himself safe from the malefices of demons; for the man whom the protection of God abandons, inflated with pride, without doubt lies open to the malefices of demons.

The fourth reason is so that there may be a distinction between the good and the evil. For Scripture says of good men, beloved by God, in the Acts of the Apostles, that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God. And holy Paul, lover of Christ, says in a certain epistle: All who wish

H iij to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution. Likewise the wisest king Solomon says in Proverbs: Whom the Lord loves, he corrects, and, like a father, he is pleased with his son. It is a very glorious thing for a Christian, suffering for the love of God, to endure adversities, whether they are inflicted by evil men or by demons. For power is given to the devil and his ministers to harm good and just men, not for their destruction, as the inexperienced suppose, but rather for the very great and certain consolation of the soul.

Indeed, when a just man lives well, harms no one, offends no one, does injury to no one, loves his God with his whole heart, fears and venerates him, and keeps his commandments with all care, yet nonetheless is troubled by malefices, whether in body, in possessions, or in both, truly blessed is that man; for when he has been proved, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Everyone who lives rightly in the unity of the faith of the catholic Church of Christians, and, receiving evils in this world, patiently endures them for the love of God, is a sure sign that he perseveres in the grace of God and is to be saved.

On the contrary, concerning the evil and reprobate we read it written thus: Why do the impious live? They have been raised up and strengthened with riches. Their houses are secure, and the rod of God is not upon them. They spend their days in good things, and in a moment they descend to hell. For it is a manifest sign of damnation if you live badly here in sins and vices, opposed to God, and yet prosper in the goods of fortune and in bodily health.

The fifth reason why the Almighty permits good and just men to be troubled by the evil and reprobate is for the complete purification of the mind. For, as Scripture says, there is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin. But since God lets no sin pass unpunished, he ordains temporal punishments for just men, through mercy, for their faults, but eternal punishments for the impious and reprobate, through justice. Therefore, out of mercy, he changes eternal punishment for the penitent into temporal punishment, which either in in this world, or after death in purgatory. But because the torments of purgatory are dreadful and very grave, the merciful God is accustomed to purify in this life, in various ways, the penitents whom he loves, through the hardships of diverse tribulations in body and in possessions.

For the evil works of the impious benefit good and just people as a remedy, but bring damnation upon those who inflict them. The sixth reason is that a person, harmed through the assaults of demons, may be recalled to penitence and may resolve in his heart on the necessary amendment of life. For Almighty God does not immediately send vengeance when we sin, but waits for our amendment until a predetermined time. But if we have neglected to do penance, the avenger of evils comes to us when we do not expect it; and we who, as sinners, have scorned to acknowledge ourselves by doing penance in tranquility, will at last acknowledge ourselves late, in tribulation. Hence the holy prophet speaks in the person of God, saying: If his sons abandon my law and do not walk in my judgments and do not keep my commandments, I will visit their iniquities with the rod, and their sins with blows; but my mercy I will not take away from them, nor will I do harm in my truth.

The seventh reason why Almighty God permits the evil works of demons to prevail over the good and innocent is that an excessively unrestrained occasion for sinning may be cut away from them. For there are many poor and sick people, pleasing to God, good, devout, and humble, whom poverty and bodily illness preserve in the love of God; if they were rich and raised high with honors, they would quickly fall away from the resolve of holiness into the depth of vices. It is not expedient for everyone’s salvation to have honors and riches together with health, nor does a longer life always make a person better. Therefore Almighty God, wishing to show his mercy toward those whom he has chosen, permits the good, the just, and the innocent to be subject to various calamities.

And sometimes through demons, sometimes through evil people, and sometimes through various other ways and means, he takes away from such people the riches and honors which he foreknew they would use badly, so that in poverty and abasement they may keep the humility which, placed in wealth and high station, they would by no means have preserved. He also often permits them to fall into many great illnesses, because cheerful bodily health would have brought upon them the greatest sickness of mind. Finally, he permits certain people to be driven to death by sorcery, so that the license for sinning may be cut away from them, which they would have abused for longer had they been allowed to remain in life. Hence Scripture says of the just man: He was snatched away lest malice change his understanding, and lest deceit deceive his soul.

The eighth reason for divine permission is that people may venerate the sacraments of the Church, which have a powerful virtue against all the evil works of malignant spirits. For a person who venerates the sacraments and rites of the catholic Church with due honor is rarely harmed by the evil works of demons. And by the very confession of witches we have often heard that attendance at masses and the use of things blessed by the Church greatly weaken the powers of demons. Nor are things blessed in the Church of God in vain, but so that they may be, as it were, defenses of divine protection and tokens to be feared by demons. But concerning children and infants who, reborn in Christ, are sometimes killed by the evil works of demons or of human beings, we do not doubt that divine providence permits this to happen for their salvation, since it knows how to order all things for the better for mortals. Yet it often happens that infants perish by sorcery because of the offenses of their parents.

ON THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD The Eighth Question.

Question Eighth

The eighth question of your Serenity was this: whether it can be proved by natural reason, as also from the Holy Scriptures, that God has care for human affairs and actions, and a sure and infallible providence over all and each of the things that are done in the world.

To this question I remember that I answered as follows. The whole world, heaven and earth and all things that are in them, are subject to divine providence; by its will and command they were brought forth into being from the beginning. For there is nothing in the whole universe that is not governed by the providence of the Creator. Let us confirm this opinion first by the Scriptures, and afterwards by reasons, as briefly as possible. In the book of Judith we read: “All your ways are peaceful, and you have placed all judgments in your providence.” And in Ecclesiastes the most wise king Solomon speaks thus: “Do not give your mouth so as to make your soul sin, nor say before the angel, ‘There is no providence,’ lest perhaps the Lord, angered against your words, destroy all the works of your hands.”

The most manifest testimonies of providence are confirmed in the holy Gospel, when our Savior says to the disciples: “Are not two sparrows sold for an assarius? And one of them does not fall to the ground before God?” This is a great commendation of divine providence, which has care not only for men but also for the smallest birds. Indeed, if the Almighty cares for such small things, who would not believe that he has care for great things? “Look,” he says, “at the birds of heaven, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” And a little later he adds, saying: “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more you, of little faith?” Since God is almighty, because he created all things and brought them into being when they did not exist, he rules and governs the universe lest it fall and pass away. This could in no way happen if he did not have providence and care for all things. For if providence is removed, it is necessary that the order of continuity of the whole universe be thrown into confusion. But the providence of the Creator cares for all things, since he who feeds the birds, gives their food to the beasts of burden, fills every living creature with blessing, and clothes the grass of the field, adorning violets and lilies with beautiful grace, cannot forget man, whom from the beginning he created in his own image. He who governs all things cares for all things; and he carries out providence not only for man, but also for all beasts of burden. All things are placed under his dominion, and there is no one who can resist his will in anything.

Let us now, therefore, consider this vast structure of the whole universe: how it always perseveres, most orderly, in its original arrangement and motion. Unless we shamefully go astray in mind, we shall understand by the most manifest reason that the divine and unchangeable providence preserves, directs, and governs these things. Next let us contemplate all earthly things, each of which, most orderly, is born and proceeds in its own natural arrangement. This cannot happen by chance; rather, they must be moved by the will of him by whose power they were made and created.

Then, in turn, consider the earth placed in the middle of the world like a point or center, which unfolds the circle at an equal distance from the whole universe; nothing more beautiful, nothing more adorned, nothing finally more delightful to the sense could present itself as suitable. In this point of an immense mass, enclosed by that very mass, we discern all things wonderfully ordered, and nothing could be left unordered. Thus all things that sometimes seem to us somehow to float about, we may know for certain, do not lack their own particular order within the order of the universe. For by the simple and altogether unchangeable nod of God, the whole structure of the entire universe, composed of so many diverse and moving things, is ruled and harmonizes in the most orderly way. Certainly, in those things that present themselves to our senses, we see that, in any governor, the greater the intelligence and power that arise with time, the more he the less can anything disorderly happen by fortuitous chance. Since, therefore, that supreme intellect, the creator, preserver, and ruler of all things, almighty God, rules and governs the world by his unchangeable providence, holding all things under his command, surely no place anywhere is left for rash chance, which might impede the will of so great a majesty.

Therefore the universe, whatever exists anywhere or can exist, is comprehended under the rule of one divine mind, whose infallible judgment nothing can escape. But unexpected events happen to us because we are changeable and are changed almost daily, having no determinate knowledge of future things. But that best maker of all things, God, since he is altogether unchangeable, knows all things, beholds all things, and understands all things at once and simultaneously. His providence is not deceived; his will is never changed; his power is not broken; his ordering is not violated; his counsel is never interrupted, even if his decision sometimes seems to be changed. Hence, if we attend carefully, we shall plainly understand, as the ends of things and motions will show, that all these lower things are made, preserved, disposed, and moved by divine providence, to whose command nothing at all is alien. For God himself, the lord of the universe, understands both all things and each thing: not stretched out, after our fashion, among many things, but abiding in himself as an indivisible unity. By contemplating himself as the pattern of the whole universe, and the cause of causes, and through causes the cause of all things, he beholds all things; and in beholding, he cares for and provides for each thing, directing it to its end and good by an everlasting order.

Come now, most wise Caesar, so that we may understand divine providence governing all things, let us use arguments as briefly as we can for our purpose. Therefore, if God's action is his own understanding, which no wise man fails to admit as at once most eminent and most inward, then as much as he acts, so much surely he understands, and conversely. But he acts in individual things, not only in great things but even in the smallest; therefore he understands individual things. For the first Being has, through each and every being that follows in fixed orders, a most ample influence; and the things that act after him are everywhere moved and act by his power.

Either, then, God understands or does nothing outside himself, which is false; or, in acting upon all things and each thing, he also understands those same things, which is true. For they would never be made unless first, to speak in our fashion, they were understood by God himself, who makes them, just as things are not made by the sun unless they are looked upon by it. But because the omnipotent one understands all things and each thing that he makes, there is no doubt that he disposes, rules, and orders all things that he has made; and from him things have not only that they exist, but also that they are certain causes of other things. Thus, if things have from God that they are causes, from him also they have received the proper office of a cause, that is, to preserve according to their powers and to care for what they have made. Therefore, if all causes have this property from the first cause, insofar as they are certain causes, rightly does that first cause naturally have this goodness and providence, so that he cares for all things and each thing that he has made, insofar as he is most of all the cause of them all and of each of them.

Indeed, unless these things are guarded individually by him who makes them, the common things that are preserved in individual things will never be guarded. For the whole, which consists of parts, will not be preserved if the parts themselves are neglected. Therefore from the intention of the first and greatest common intelligence proceeds the universal distinction of things. This intelligence, however, is distinguished of itself from others, and by the standard of its own knowledge distinguishes the rest among themselves. Hence, just as God knows all things and each thing most distinctly, so also he most distinctly rules, moderates, and cares for them.

Therefore I think it is manifest, most clement Caesar Maximilian, and sufficiently shown, that the providence of God, the supreme ruler, embraces, disposes, rules, and moderates all lower things and each thing, which otherwise, without the provident disposition of one who observes them, would not continue this order which we perceive. they would by no means continue this most beautiful order. Nor does it escape me that the wise men of this world once held various opinions about providence. Some of them thought that this world was made not by providence but by chance; if their opinion were true, no place would be left for providence, but all things would necessarily drift at random, since the world, which was made by chance, could perish by chance.

Against their false opinion others taught that the world could not have been made without reason, nor certainly continue to exist unless it were ruled by the supreme prudence of its maker. Hence Boethius, a most Christian man, said: O you who govern the world by eternal reason, sower of earth and heaven, who command time to proceed from eternity, and, remaining stable, cause all things to move. And again he said: The generation of all things, and all the progressions of mutable natures, and whatever is moved in any way, derive their causes, order, and forms from the stability of the divine mind.

Others, however, thought that God cared only for incorruptible things, such as the heavenly bodies and separate substances, together with the species of things, but that he knew nothing else at all and utterly neglected all the rest. But these men erred shamefully, because the Almighty has providence and care not only for universal and incorruptible things, but also for particular and corruptible things. Hence the same Boethius again says: But on earth also the lofty founder and ruler of things guides the reins: king and lord, source and origin, law and wise arbiter of equity. He is the continuous love for all things, and the good things seek to be held by their end, because they cannot endure otherwise unless, turned back again by love, they flow back to the causes which he himself gave.

Others, however, unable to bear that they should be neglected, exempted man from the number of corruptible things on account of the preeminence of his intellect, saying that God has care and providence for man, but despises all the other earthly things. Against their false opinion enough, I think, has been said, and to produce many arguments would be altogether superfluous. For Scripture says: You will save men and beasts, O Lord. And in another place a certain wise man said: The small and the great

I iiij. were made by the Lord, and he has care for all alike. Therefore divine majesty's providence orders, rules, disposes, and cares for all lower things, each and every one, great and small, corruptible and incorruptible; his most powerful will produced all things from nothing, as sacred Scripture again bears witness: But your providence, Father, has governed all things from the beginning.

Let men of corrupt mind, impious and reprobate concerning the Christian faith, therefore blush with shame: those who, puffed up with empty talkativeness, take away the providence of him who knows all things, and do not consider what great injury they do to God. For what, to use Firmianus's judgment, is so worthy and so proper to almighty God as providence? But if he foresees nothing, if he neglects lower things, if he does not care for mortal things, he has already lost all his dignity. But it is impossible, as holy Anselm attests, for God to lose his honor, since, as the Peripatetic says, in eternal things there is no evil, nor corruption, nor sin. Therefore whoever takes away providence takes away the whole substance of God. And what does he say except that God does not exist?

But now let those who deny that God's providence cares for lower things tell me: if God neglects lower things, let them consider what necessarily follows. If God knowingly neglects and despises us, there is no longer any cause why we should attend upon him with worship or venerate him with religion, since we obtain no benefit from him; rather, being neglected and despised, let us neglect him ourselves as well.

But if he despises and neglects us unknowingly, there is now no reason at all for us to worship one who does not know us, and on that account is unable to confer any good, or to invoke him with prayers. For if God does not care for human affairs, whether knowingly or unknowingly, every cause for piety ceases, since there is no hope of salvation. What consideration of piety can there be among mortals, what hope for the salvation of souls, if God does not care for human affairs? Indeed, if providence is taken away, whom do we worship, whom do we adore? If there is no providence with God— providence for mortals: certainly he neither grants benefits to human beings nor imposes punishments on deserters; he can neither help mortals, nor wishes to, nor cares at all; he does not notice what we do, and he hears neither the prayers nor the supplications of anyone. Why do we offer him any worship, why honor, why prayers? Or why do we so greatly fear or dread a God who does not know us, who, with us neglected and despised, can neither do us good nor harm?

For once providence is removed, neither holiness nor religion will remain; and when these have been extinguished, the greatest disorder of life and dreadful confusion will follow. Once piety toward God is removed, what will the commonwealth be except everlasting confusion? Public faith among human beings will necessarily perish; the fellowship of the human race and all justice together with it will vanish and perish. What must be thought of the Christian faith if God does not care for human affairs? What, finally, of the Savior of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, except that he will be reckoned an empty fable, wholly fictitious, if there is no providence of God caring for mortal things? Therefore whatever good we do in this life, whatever evil we suffer for the love of God, is wholly vain and useless to us if he has no care for us.

Let those who deny the providence of God now see and shudder, when they perceive that the end of their opinion is the worst despair of all. Therefore let no one, induced by the vain-speaking of secular philosophers, train himself to contempt of God; let no one take away the providence of the highest and unchangeable good; let no one corrupt the dignity of the creator of all things. For all who deny divine providence show themselves both unworthy of the benefits of the most merciful Savior and ungrateful.

For it must be firmly believed, and in no way doubted, that this whole universe, both visible and invisible, and all things individually, whether they are in heaven or on earth or in the sea, are ruled and governed by divine providence, and that absolutely nothing in the whole universe is alien to his care.

I iiij For the fruits of the earth and all the other things that the earth brings forth, and also storms and the various changes of the seasons by which all the things that the earth produces grow naturally to maturity, divine providence supplies for the human race; and it provides for all things individually, not only the great but also the smallest things, to such a degree that not even the thinnest leaf of a tree falls to the ground without the will of almighty God the Father, who created it and rules and cares for it. But if anyone thinks that this vast greatness of the whole universe cannot be ruled and governed by one God, who alone exists, he is greatly deceived, and is shown not to know how great the power of divine might is. Indeed, he who was able to bring the whole universe from nothing into being is also able to govern forever, with the greatest wisdom, what he has made. For he knows all things, understands all things, and can do all things, he who alone, omnipotent, created all things.

Therefore we, believing the holy Gospel, should above all venerate divine providence; we should also raise our minds upward, with what strength we can, away from the things that are transitory, and, brought back to ourselves, be united, so that we may faithfully understand the majesty of God present everywhere. Since it is wholly uncircumscribable, it holds all things, fills all things, embraces all things, surpasses all things, and sustains all things. It does not sustain from one side and surpass from another, nor fill from one side and encompass from another; rather, by encompassing it fills, by filling it super-encompasses, by sustaining it surpasses, and by surpassing it sustains all things. By the mass of a body he is nowhere, and by his uncircumscribable substance he is nowhere absent; he is not seen by the eyes of flesh, but is seen through faith in purity of heart. O inexplicable power, O incomprehensible goodness, O ineffable wisdom, O uncircumscribable divinity, which does not consist of parts like a body, nor of passions.

...you are not divided as a soul is; you do not underlie forms as do all the other things that have been made through you; you are in all things and above all things, ruling and governing the universe with the greatest wisdom. By these testimonies, therefore, most sacred Caesar Maximilian, it has been sufficiently proved, as I think, that this whole universe is governed by the providence of God. Since he is pure intellect, simple, uncreated, and eternal, he knows all things, understands all things, foreknows all things; and since he is almighty by nature, he can do all things. To him nothing is difficult, nothing impossible; he created such wondrous things by his power; he established them in truth; by reason he perfected them; by strength he sustains them; by goodness he illumines them. To him be praise, to him honor, to him glory, who lives and reigns, God glorious and exalted, forever and ever. Amen.

THE AUTHOR'S DECLARATION TO CAESAR.

These, most unconquered Caesar Maximilian, are the things that seemed to me should be said in reply to the Eight Questions proposed by your majesty. For you wished to have my judgment on them also in writing, making an estimate of me beyond the truth, since I am not to be compared in talent with those whose opinion you heard before me. Let pardon make me worthy if I have said anything less proper; for, at the command of your highness, set as a traveler on a journey, I dictated as I could, at intervals, whatever occurred to me to answer. But I say from my mind and openly declare that I am a sincere confessor of the Christian faith, and that I wish to remain until death in the union of the sacrosanct Roman Church. Therefore, if anything either in this lucubration of mine or in others should be found said or written otherwise than that Church holds, thinks, believes, and teaches, as a true son of obedience, by the attestation of these presents I now simply revoke it, and wish it to be and to be held perpetually revoked.

Wherefore, most wise Caesar, I both humbly ask and earnestly admonish your majesty that, before you cause my responses to come to the knowledge of those for whom they are destined and kept, you have them approved by the judgment of many. For great care must be taken that nothing be proposed to those for whose salvation your serenity keeps watch except what is solid, approved, manifest, and lawfully confirmed in the Catholic faith by the opinion of very many wise men. May almighty God by his providence direct and guard you always to the praise of his name, Maximilian, greatest of emperors. From the city of Neometana, on the tenth day of the month of July, in the year of Christians one thousand five hundred and eight.

Printed at Oppenheim at the expense of Johannes Hasselberg, of Augia in the diocese of Constance, in the year of the Lord 1515, on the twentieth day of the month of September.

Aambat ar zefing fetu sanus. Erabitur in Zosbina litbursa: [OCR repetition across pages 90–91; the source is not recoverable as connected text.]

[blank page]

THE PRINCESS OF THE PAPYRUS