Annual Bibliography 1991.

The repeated injunction of redde quod debes in B passus 19-20, though seeming to challenge the Augustinian claim for unmerited salvation, actually affirms it. “Restitution,” in the sense that Charity employs the term in passus 17, is to be understood as the recognition of Paul’s teaching that all are included under sin and unable to save themselves, and that the person who extends “kyndeness” to others realizes that he himself has been the recipient of mercy from the Holy Spirit. The demand for payment becomes the metaphor for an insistence on belief, including the surrender of the self to God. The portrayal of human effort in PPl as inadequate for overcoming sin contrasts with the common fourteenth-century emphasis on salvation by works.