St. Paul, it is true, asks: “Who resisteth his [God’s] will?”(693) But he also admonishes his favorite disciple Timothy: “Exercise thyself unto godliness.”(694) St. Stephen testifies that the grace of the Holy Ghost does not compel the will. “You always resist the Holy Ghost,” he tells the Jews; “as your fathers did, so do you also.”(695) Our Lord Himself teaches that grace exerts no interior compulsion but invites free coöperation: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”(696) The exhortations, promises, and threats uttered in various portions of Holy Writ would be meaningless if it were true that grace destroys free-will.(697) b) As regards Tradition, the Greek Fathers who wrote before St. Augustine defended the freedom of the will so energetically that they were subsequently accused of harboring Pelagian and Semipelagian errors.(698) Calvin himself admits that with but one exception the Fathers are unanimously opposed to his teaching.(699) The one exception noted is St. Augustine, to whom both Calvin and Jansenius appeal with great confidence. It should be noted, however, that the point which chiefly concerned St. Augustine in his controversies with the Pelagians and Semipelagians, was the necessity and gratuity of grace, not its relation to free-will. Where he incidentally touches upon the latter, he shows by the manner in which he formulates his sentences that he regards the relation of grace to free-will as a great mystery. But he does not try to solve this mystery in the manner in which Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot. He does not declare: Grace is everything, free-will is nothing. If the power of grace destroyed the freedom of the human will, their mutual relation would be no problem.(700) Possibly St. Augustine in the heat of controversy now and then expressed himself in language open to misinterpretation, as when he said: “Therefore aid was brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it might be unchangeably and invincibly influenced by divine grace.”(701) But this and similar phrases admit of a perfectly orthodox interpretation. As the context shows, Augustine merely wished to assert the hegemony of grace in all things pertaining to salvation, and to emphasize the fact that free-will, strengthened by grace, is able to resist even the most grievous temptations.(702) At no period of his life did the Saint deny the freedom of the will under the influence of grace. We will quote but two out of many available passages in proof of this statement. “To yield consent or to withhold it, whenever God calls, is the function of one’s own will.”(703) “For the freedom of the will is not destroyed because the will is aided; but it is aided precisely for the reason that it remains free.”(704) St. Bernard of Clairvaux echoes this teaching when, in his own ingenious way, he summarizes the Catholic dogma as follows: “Take away free will and there will be nothing left to save; take away grace and