The proud Free-will Pelagian takes the credit for his own goodness- St Augustine

The proud Free-will Pelagian takes the credit for his own goodness

What good does it do the Pelagians to praise free will by saying, ‘grace assists everyone’s good resolution’? We could accept this without hesitation as being said in a Universal spirit, if they did not attribute worthiness to the good resolution. For that would mean that God’s assistance was now a wage paid as a debt to this worthiness and that is no longer grace. They need to understand and confess that even that good resolution itself, which grace then comes and assists, could not have existed in a person if grace had not gone before it. How can there be a good resolution in someone without the mercy of God going first, since it is the good will which is itself prepared by the Lord?

When the Pelagians say that ‘grace assists everyone’s good resolution,’ and then add, ‘yet grace does not infuse the love of virtue into a heart that resists,’ even this might be understood in a right sense, except that we know what they really mean. For in the case of the heart that resists, God’s grace itself first of all makes the heart willing to hear the divine call; and then, the heart no longer resisting, grace kindles the desire for virtue. So then, in everything where anyone does anything in accordance with God, God’s mercy works first. And this our adversaries will not confess, because they choose to be not Christian, but Free-will Pelagians. For it gives much delight to a proud ungodliness to think that, even when a person is forced to acknowledge that the Lord has given him something, it was not given as a gift, but paid in return for something. In this way, the children of destruction, not of the promise, think that they have made themselves good, and that God has repaid the self-made virtuous the reward they deserve for their work.

This is the pride that has blocked up the ears of the Pelagians’ hearts, so that they do not hear, ‘For what do you have that you did not receive?’ (1 Cor.4:7) They do not hear, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (Jn.15:5) They do not hear, ‘Love is from God’ (1 Jn.4:7) They do not hear, ‘God has dealt out to each one a measure of faith’ (Rom.12:3). They do not hear, ‘The Spirit breathes where He wills’ (Jn.3:8), and, ‘Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ (Rom.8:14). They do not hear, ‘No-one can come to Me, unless it has been granted to him by My Father’ (Rom.8:14). They do not hear what Ezra writes, ‘Blessed is the Lord of our fathers, Who has put into the heart of the king to glorify His house which is in Jerusalem’ (Ezra 7:27). They do not hear what the Lord says through Jeremiah, ‘And I will put My fear into their heart, so that they will not depart not Me. Yes, I will visit them to make them good’ (Jer.32:40-41).

And especially they do not hear that word spoken by Ezekiel the prophet, where God fully shows that He does not make people good (that is, obedient to His commands) because He is moved by worthy qualities in them. No, He repays people good for evil, by doing this for His own sake, and not for theirs. For He says, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations, where you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, I will cleanse you. A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep My ordinances, and do them’ (Ezek.36:22-27).

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 4:13-14