The Bondage of the Will

This article is based on the translation made in 1823 by Edward Thomas Vaughan. The language has been modernized with the assistance of CoPilot AI, with further alterations and final approval by Thirdmill’s editorial staff.

Reasons for the Work

IN replying so tardily to your Diatribe on Free Will, my venerable Erasmus, I have done violence both to the general expectation and to my own custom. Till this instance, I have seemed willing not only to lay hold on such opportunities of writing when they occurred to me, but even to go in search of them without provocation. Some perhaps will be ready to wonder at this new and unusual patience (as it may be) or fear of Luther's, who has not been roused from his silence even by so many speeches and letters which have been bandied to and fro among his adversaries, congratulating Erasmus upon his victory, and chanting an Io Pæan.

So then, this Maccabaeus and most inflexible Assertor has at length found an antagonist worthy of him, whom he does not dare to open his mouth against! I am so far from blaming these men, however, that I am quite ready to yield a palm to you myself, such as I never yet did to any man. I admit that you not only very far excel me in eloquence and genius (a palm which we all deservedly yield to you — how much more such a man as I; a barbarian who has always dwelt amidst barbarism), but that you have checked both my spirit and my inclination to answer you, and have made me languid before the battle. You have done this twice over: first, by your art in pleading this cause with such a wonderful command of temper, from first to last, that you have made it impossible for me to be angry with you; and secondly, by contriving, through fortune, accident, or fate, to say nothing on this great subject which has not been said before. In fact, you say so much less for Free Will, and yet ascribe so much more to it, than the Sophists have done before you (of which I shall speak more at large hereafter), that it seemed quite superfluous to answer those arguments of yours which I have so often confuted myself, and which have been trodden underfoot, and crushed to atoms, by Philip Melancthon's invincible 'Common Places.'

In my judgment, that work of his deserves not only to be immortalized, but even canonized. So mean and worthless did yours appear when compared with it, that I exceedingly pitied you, who were polluting your most elegant and ingenious diction with such filth of argument, and was quite angry with your most unworthy matter, for being conveyed in so richly ornamented a style of eloquence. It is just as if the sweepings of the house or of the stable were borne about on men's shoulders in vases of gold and silver! You seem to have been sensible of this yourself, from the difficulty with which you were persuaded to undertake the office of writing, on this occasion. Your conscience, no doubt, admonishing you, that with whatever powers of eloquence you might attempt the subject, it would be impossible to so gloss it over that I would not discover the excrementitious nature of your matter through all the tricksy ornaments of phrase with which you might cover it — that I should not discover it, I say, who though rude in speech, by the grace of God, I am not rude in knowledge.

For I do not hesitate, with Paul, to thus claim the gift of knowledge for myself, and to withhold it from you with equal confidence — while I claim eloquence and genius for you, and willingly withhold them from myself, as I ought to do. So that I have been led to reason thus with myself: If there are those who have not drunk deeper into our writings, nor yet more firmly maintain them (fortified as they are by such an accumulation of Scripture proofs) than to be shaken by those trifling or good for nothing arguments of Erasmus, though dressed out, then I admit, in the most engaging apparel, such persons are not worth being cured by an answer from me. For nothing could be said or written which would be sufficient for such men, though many thousands of books were repeated a thousand times over. You might just as well plough the seashore and cast your seed into the sand, or fill a cask that is full of holes, with water. We have ministered abundantly to those who have drunk of the Spirit as their Teacher, through the instrumentality of our books; and they perfectly despise your performances; and as for those who read without the Spirit, it is no wonder if they are driven like the seed with every wind. To such persons, God would not say enough, if He were to convert all his creatures into tongues. Thus, I have almost determined to leave these persons, stumbled as they were by your publication, with the crowd which glories in you and decrees that you are a triumph. You see then, that it is neither the multitude of my engagements, nor the difficulty of the undertaking, nor the vastness of your eloquence, nor any fear of you, but mere disgust, indignation, and contempt — or to say the truth, my deliberate judgment respecting your Diatribe, which has restrained the impulse of my mind to answer you. This is not to mention what also has its place here: that fever-like yourself, with the greatest pertinacity.

You take care to always be evasive and ambiguous. More cautious than Ulysses, you flatter yourself that you contrive to sail between Scylla and Charybdis, while you would be understood to have asserted nothing, yet again assume the air of an asserter. With men of this sort, how is it possible to confer and to compare, unless one possessed the art of catching Proteus? Hereafter I will show you with Christ's help, what I can do in this way, and what you have gained by putting me to it. Still it is not without reason that I answer you now. The faithful brethren in Christ impel me by suggesting the general expectation which is entertained of a reply from my pen — inasmuch as the authority of Erasmus is not to be despised, and the true Christian doctrine is brought into jeopardy in the hearts of many. At length, too, it has occurred to me that there has been a great lack of piety in my silence; and that I have been beguiled by the wisdom or wickedness of my flesh into a forgetfulness of my office, which makes me debtor to the wise and to the unwise, especially when I am called to discharge it by the entreaties of so many of the brethren.

For, our business is not content with an external teacher. Besides Him who plants and waters without, it desires the Spirit of God also (that He may give the increase, and being Himself life, He may teach the doctrine of life within the soul — a thought which imposed on me). Still, whereas this Spirit is free, and breathes not where we would, but where He himself wills, I should have observed that rule of Paul's, "Be instant in season, out of season," for we know not at what hour the Lord shall come. What if some have not yet experienced the teaching of the Spirit through my writings, and have been dashed to the ground by your Diatribe! It may be that their hour has not yet come. And who knows but that God may deign to visit even you, my excellent Erasmus, by so wretched and frail a little vessel of His, as myself? Who knows but that I may come to you in a happy hour (I wish it from my heart of the Father of Mercies through Christ our Lord) by means of this treatise, and may gain a most dear brother? For, although you both think ill and write ill on the subject of free will, I owe you vast obligations for having greatly confirmed me in my sentiments, by letting me see the cause of Freewill pleaded by such and so great a genius, with all his might — and yet, after all, so little is effected that it stands worse than it did before. Here is an evident proof that Freewill is a downright lie, since, like the woman in the Gospel, the more it is healed by the doctors, the worse it fares. I will give unbounded thanks to you if the event is that you are made to know the truth through me, even as I have become more fixed in it through you. Yet, each of these results is the gift of the Spirit, not the achievement of our own good offices.

We must therefore pray God to open my mouth and your heart, and the hearts of all men, and to be present himself as a Teacher in the midst of us, speaking and hearing severally within our souls. Once more, let me beg of you, my Erasmus, to bear with my rudeness of speech, even as I bear with your ignorance on these subjects. God does not give all his gifts to one man; nor have we all power to do all things; or, as Paul says, "There are distributions of gifts, but the same Spirit." (1Cor 12.11) It remains, therefore, that the gifts labour mutually for each other, and that one man bear the burden of another's penury by the gift which he has received himself; thus we fulfil the law of Christ. (Gal 6.2.)