St. Augustine on law and grace

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/07/st-augustine-on-law-and-grace/

from this here is a quote:

Overview of the Reformed and Catholic positions on Law and Grace

Before turning to St. Augustine, consider briefly the Reformed and Catholic doctrines concerning the relation of law and grace. According to Reformed theology, justification is by an extra nos (i.e. outside of us) imputation of the obedience of Christ. In other words, God justifies us by counting us as righteous not because of any righteousness infused into us, but by crediting Christ’s righteousness to our account, and crediting Him with our sins. God counts Christ’s suffering and death as punishment for our sins, and God counts Christ’s perfect obedience as our obedience. By this double imputation, nothing we do can bring us into condemnation.¹ That is what it means, in Reformed theology, to be no longer under law, but under grace. The law remains normative and binding on believers as a guide to living correctly, but no one who has been justified by grace through faith can be condemned by the law, nor justified by law-keeping. Believers are not under the law for justification or condemnation; they are under grace. Grace and law are, in that respect, mutually exclusive.

According to Catholic doctrine, justification is by an infusion of sanctifying grace and agape. God does not count-us-as-righteous-even-though-internally-we-are-unrighteous; by infusing grace and agape into our hearts at the moment of regeneration He instantly makes us righteous. God does not count (or impute) our sins against us (Rom 4:8), not by leaving us with a wicked sinful heart and merely overlooking our sins, but by mercifully transforming our heart through the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape such that there is no mortal sin to overlook. The person with agape in his heart is in friendship with God, and thus is righteous before God. When Abraham chose to believe God’s promise (Rom 4:3), this act not only showed that Abraham had a faith working through agape and thus was in friendship with God, but it also deepened that friendship, and so God counted it to him as righteousness. Agape fulfills the law (Rom 10:8-10), because agape is the spirit of the law. Withoutagape, no one is righteous in His sight. But through Christ agape is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). By this agape in our hearts, we walk in newness of life; this infused grace and agape produces the “obedience of faith” of which St. Paul speaks (Rom 1:5, 16:26). This infused grace and agape is the gift of righteousness (Rom 5:17) by which we have been “freed from sin and made slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18,22). By this gift we are made “doers of the Law” (Rom 2:13), such that the requirement of the Law is “fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit,” (Rom 8:4). By this gift we subject ourselves to the law of God (Rom 8:7). By this gift of infused sanctifying grace and agape, our spirit is made alive (Rom 8:10) and the law is written on our hearts (cf. Rom 2:28-29), truly in our hearts (Rom 10:8, 10), as the prophet Jeremiah prophesied long ago concerning the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33-34). So according to the Catholic doctrine regarding law and grace, by the infusion of sanctifying grace we receive the gift of agape by which we truly fulfill the law. Here, grace and law are not mutually exclusive; grace orients us to God in divine love such that we fulfill the law, and are truly justified in our hearts.

also further down near the end of the article:

Who are those “under the law”? They are those who trust in their own virtue or power to keep the law, and so seek to establish a righteousness of their own. St. Augustine explains that St. Paul was referring to those Jews who had not believed in Christ. They were ignorant not only of Christ, but of the righteousness which is from above, received by faith through the sacrament of baptism which Christ Himself established to be the means by which the Spirit of grace is infused into the hearts of men. St. Augustine continues:

And that you may know that he designated as theirs the righteousness which is of the law, and as God’s that which man receives from God, hear what he says in another passage, when speaking of Christ: “For whose sake I counted all things not only as loss, but I deemed them to be dung, that I might win Christ, and be found in Him — not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God.” (Philippians 3:8-9) Now what does he mean by “not having my own righteousness, which is of the law,” when the law is really not his at all, but God’s, — except this, that he called it his own righteousness, although it was of the law, because he thought he could fulfil the law by his own will, without the aid of grace which is through faith in Christ? Wherefore, after saying, “Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law,” he immediately subjoined, “But that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God.” This is what they were ignorant of, of whom he says, “Being ignorant of God’s righteousness,” — that is, the righteousness which is of God (for it is given not by the letter, which kills, but by the life-giving Spirit), “and wishing to establish their own righteousness,” which he expressly described as the righteousness of the law, when he said, “Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law;” they were not subject to the righteousness of God — in other words, they submitted not themselves to the grace of God. For they were under the law, not under grace, and therefore sin had dominion over them, from which a man is not freed by the law, but by grace. On which account he elsewhere says, “For sin shall not have dominion over you; because you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom 6:14) Not that the law is evil; but because they are under its power, whom it makes guilty by imposing commandments, not by aiding. It is by grace that any one is a doer of the law; and without this grace, he who is placed under the law will be only a hearer of the law. To such persons he addresses these words: “You who are justified by the law are fallen from grace.” (Gal 5:4) (chapter 24)

Here St. Augustine explains what St. Paul means in saying speaking of his “own righteousness, which is of the law.” It was his own because he thought he could fulfill it by his own will, without the aid of grace which is through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness which is by faith is the righteousness of God, not given by the letter of the law, but given by the Spirit, through the sacraments. But the righteousness which comes from ourselves is not subject to the righteousness of God. That is, in pride it resists and rejects the righteousness of God, because it does not wish to humble itself, and admits its entire worthlessness before God. Law-keeping without grace is a righteousness of our own that St. Paul describes as “dung.” Without grace, sin has dominion over us, and so we are in bondage to the law. But by grace we are freed from the law, not in the sense of not being obligated to keep it for the sake of our justification and salvation, but freed from being unable to keep it. By grace we are freed from the dominion of sin. That is, by the infusion of grace and agape into our hearts, we are able to keep the law, and no longer powerless to keep from breaking the law. Those persons are under the power of the law, says St. Augustine, who by the law know what is required of them, but have not been given the power to keep the law. Grace aids us internally, so that we become doers of the law, not just hearers. Without grace, anyone who is placed under the law will be only a hearer of the law, not a doer of the law.

and here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/03/aquinas-and-trent-part-7/  :

When Protestants think about being inherently righteous, they tend not to think about agape, but about having perfectly kept every law, and not having any wayward thoughts. And they tend to think that that is impossible, and so find forensic imputation much more plausible and attractive than this [seemingly] impossible standard of perfect legal righteousness that God expects of us. So, for example, they find vices in themselves after baptism, and take that as evidence that they are in fact unrighteous, and that provides the attraction of simul iustus et peccator. Yet in Catholic doctrine the law is fulfilled by those having agape,⁴⁴ and venial sins (by definition) do not remove agape from the soul. Our righteousness before God (as friends of God) is not determined by or effected by our venial sins. So, while at the Judgment we are judged for all that we have done in the body, yet, our justification only requires that we have agape. Not having the mortal-venial distinction makes many Protestants conceive of the Catholic life as one of losing justification many times a day. And that seems (rightly) ridiculous to them. But in Catholic doctrine it is agape by which we fulfill the law, and mortal sin (in which agape is lost) is not something we should (ordinarily) be committing on a daily basis.