Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6, 14, 108, 4 (ante 217 AD)
“When we hear, ‘Your faith has saved you,’ we do not understand (the
Lord) to say simply that they will be saved who have believed in whatever
manner, even if works have not followed. To begin with, it was to the Jews
alone that He spoke this phrase, who had lived in accord with the law and
blamelessly, and who had lacked only faith in the Lord.”
Origen, Commentaries on St. John 19, 6 (inter 226-232 AD)
“Whoever dies in his sins, even if he profess to believe in Christ, does not
truly believe in Him; and even if that which exists without works be called
faith, such faith is dead in itself, as we read in the Epistle bearing the name
of James.”
St. Jerome, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians 2, 3, 11 (c.
386 AD)
“‘But since in the Law no one is justified before God, it is evident that the
just man lives by faith’ … It should be noted that he does not say that a
man, a person, lives by faith, lest it be thought that he is condemning good
works. Rather, he says the just man lives by faith. He implies thereby that
whoever would be faithful and would conduct his life according to the faith
can in no other way arrive at the faith or live in it except first he be a just
man of pure life, coming up to the faith as it were by certain degrees.”
Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)
Pt. III, Ch. I:
…in these our days there are not wanting those who, to
their own serious injury, have the impious hardihood to assert that the
observance of the law, whether easy or difficult, is by no means necessary
for salvation ... A man, it is true, may be justified, and from wicked may
become righteous, before he has fulfilled, by external acts, each of the
Commandments; but no one who has arrived at the use of reason can be
justified, unless he is resolved to keep all of God’s Commandments.
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