Dist. 27, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/27/q/bon-sent-II-d27-a1-q1
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### Article I. *On grace in comparison with another habit.*
### Question I. *Whether sanctifying grace must be divided through essentially diverse differences.*

Concerning the first point one proceeds thus and asks whether sanctifying grace must be divided through differences diverse by essence. And that it must, it seems.

1. The Master in the text, taking up the authority of Augustine, divides grace into *prevenient* and *subsequent*. If, then, a right division must be through opposites, and opposites cannot come to be about the same thing at one and the same moment, it therefore seems that it is impossible for one and the same grace to be both prevenient and subsequent. But if you say that this division is only through differences as to *act* and *effect*, not as to *habit*; against this is what is said in the Gloss on the thirty-third chapter of Exodus: *If I have found grace* etc., where the Gloss says: «One grace does not suffice for the saints. For one precedes, that they may love and know the Lord; another follows, that they may keep themselves clean»: therefore the division of grace into prevenient and subsequent is not only through diverse uses, but also through diverse habits.

2. Likewise, in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter twelve: *Divisions of graces* etc. If, then, those graces which the Apostle there distinguishes are divided, and are divided by the Holy Spirit, it seems that they are essentially distinguished. If you say that he is speaking of *freely given* graces (*gratiae gratis datae*), not of sanctifying grace; it is *objected* against this that more is necessary for one to have *sanctifying* grace than *freely given* grace: therefore if a multitude of habits is required for the perfection of the use of freely given grace, much more so for the perfection of sanctifying grace.

3. Likewise, this same thing seems to follow by *reason*. «If one of two opposites is said in many ways, so too is the other which is opposed to it»; but fault (*culpa*), by the very fact that it is fault, is opposed to sanctifying grace insofar as it is grace: therefore, since there are many differences of faults which are formally distinguished, it seems that there are many differences of sanctifying grace which are essentially diversified.

4. Likewise, «habits are diversified through acts»; but to grace, as such, it belongs to heal the soul, it belongs also to preserve it from evil, it belongs also to strengthen it in good. If, then, these are different and different acts, according to which bodily medicines too are distinguished from one another — since one

medicine is preservative, another curative, another restorative — by parity of reasoning this seems to belong to grace.

5. Likewise, as knowledge stands with respect to the things to be known, so grace stands with respect to merits; but knowledge with respect to diverse knowable things is different and different: therefore it seems that grace, which is the principle of diverse merits, is different and different; but this is sanctifying grace: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**
1. The first division of sanctifying grace is into prevenient and subsequent; but these members, as the Master says in the text, do not make a diversity of habits, but of effects: therefore neither do any other members dividing grace.

2. Likewise, the same is the influx of light that drives away darkness and illumines the air: therefore in spiritual matters the same is the influx that expels fault and disposes to good; but the first is *prevenient* grace, the second *subsequent*: therefore it seems that there is only one grace in the soul.

3. Likewise, of one thing accepted there is one acceptance. If, then, sanctifying grace is nothing other than the acceptance itself, or the ground of accepting, by which the soul is accepted by God, it seems that in one man only one sanctifying grace is to be posited.

4. Likewise, the image of re-creation corresponds to the image of creation; but for the image of creation there is required not only a plurality of powers, but also a unity of essence to which that plurality may be reduced: therefore in the image of re-creation too it is necessary to posit some one habit in which all the habits of the virtues are united; but this is nothing other than sanctifying grace: therefore etc.

5. Likewise, one man merits the same and equally by all the virtues and is accepted equally in all; but this would not be so unless there were one ground of accepting the man himself in himself and in all his acts; but this is nothing other than sanctifying grace: therefore etc.

### Conclusion

> In one soul only one sanctifying grace is to be posited.

**I respond:** It must be said that in one soul only one sanctifying grace is to be posited.

And the reason for this is taken both from the side of the *effective principle* and from the side of the *subject* and from the side of the *ultimate end* and from the side of the *first end* and also the *intermediate end*. — From the side of the *effective principle*, because grace is an influx proceeding from God into the soul itself, according to which God assimilates the whole soul to himself. Hence, since of one thing there is one likeness, in one soul there is found one grace proceeding from the effective principle. — From the side of the *subject* likewise it is necessary that sanctifying grace be one, since grace is compared to the soul as a principle giving it life in its *second being* (*esse secundo*). And since of one thing capable of being made alive there is one life or one vivifying principle, hence it is that in one soul there ought to be only one grace. — But from the side of the *end*, both first and *ultimate* and also *intermediate*, the reason is taken. For grace exists for this, that it may make a man acceptable to God; it exists also for this, that through it a man may attain to the one and highest good; it exists also for this, that the work proceeding from free choice may be meritorious before God. Since, therefore, God does not accept a man in a qualified way, but if he accepts, he accepts the whole; and the works of the same man in one state are equally meritorious; and the reward of all merits is one: hence it is that it is necessary to posit in one man that grace is one, this being required by the comparison to the effective principle and to the subject and to the immediate and ultimate end. — Hence the reasons which show this are to be granted.

**To the arguments to the contrary:**

1. To that which is first objected to the contrary concerning the division of the Master, which he sets down in the text; it must be said that that division of grace is according to the *effects* which it has in us, of which one is taken with respect to *evil*, from which it frees, the other with respect to *good*, to which it orders. Hence it is to be noted that the name of grace is equivocal, so that it is taken sometimes for the *habit*, sometimes for the *effect of the habit*; and in the division proposed it is not taken for the *habit*, but for the *effect*. In this way too it is taken in that Gloss, in which it is said that not one grace is necessary for the saints etc., that is, not one *effect* of grace only. And *if you object* that «habits are diversified through acts and effects»; it must be said that this holds true of *first acts*, of which one is not ordered to another. But it is not so in the case at hand, because the act of prevenient grace has an ordering to the act of subsequent grace.

2. To that which is objected from the authority of the Apostle, it must be said that, as was said above in the objecting, this is to be understood of *freely given* graces. For these are multiplied because they are ordered to external works, so that according to their first and immediate character they regard diverse effects; but sanctifying grace, as such, does not regard external works, as it does interior ones, except through the mediation of the habits of the virtues and gifts; or if it does regard them, this is only insofar as they are considered under one character, namely under the character of *merit*. — And therefore that which it consequently objects does not hold, that the perfection of sanctifying grace is greater than that of freely given grace; for although this is true *intensively*, it need not be so *extensively*.

3. To that which is objected, that fault is multiplied, therefore grace too; it can be answered that that reasoning fails in two ways. First indeed, because that is to be understood of a multiplication not according to division into *subjective* parts, but according to diverse *acceptations* or significations. For since the *irrational* is divided against the *rational*, it need not be that there are as many rational things as irrational. Secondly it also fails, because to one good many evils are apt to be opposed, since «evil is manifold, and good is in one way».

4. To that which is objected, that the acts of grace, insofar as it is grace, are diversified etc.; it must be said that although those acts are diverse with so great a diversity that in bodily things they are attributed to diverse things — since it belongs to one medicine to cure and to another to preserve — yet in spiritual things they are not so diversified as to induce a diversity of habit, both because of the order of the acts and effects themselves, and also because of the perfection of the habit itself, by which it has that it can far better reach into many effects without its own multiplication than bodily nature can do this through the conjunction of diverse natures.

5. To that which is objected concerning knowledge, the response is plain from what has already been said. For there is no parallel, both because knowledge denotes a habit having a respect to exterior knowable things according to their special and proper conditions and natures; and also because in some way created knowledge is said to be caused by things outside; and also because to knowledge itself it especially belongs to distinguish. But the opposites of these properties and conditions are found in grace, as can be had from what has been said before; and therefore it is not multiplied, but in one soul is found one.