Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Third Clause.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.—The
Third Clause.
According to this model,8783
| 8783 Mr. Dodgson
renders, “next to this clause;” but the
“forma” referred to seems, by what Tertullian
proceeds to add, to be what he had said above, “not that it
becomes us to wish God well,” etc. | we
subjoin, “Thy will be done in the heavens and on the
earth;”8784
| 8784 We learn from
this and other places, that the comparative adverb was wanting in some
ancient formulæ of the Lord’s Prayer. [See
Routh, Opuscula I. p. 178.] | not that there is
some power withstanding8785
to prevent
God’s will being done, and we pray for Him the successful
achievement of His will; but we pray for His will to be done in
all. For, by figurative interpretation of flesh and
spirit, we are “heaven” and “earth;”
albeit, even if it is to be understood simply, still the sense of the
petition is the same, that in us God’s will be done on
earth, to make it possible, namely, for it to be done also in the
heavens. What, moreover, does God will, but that we should walk
according to His Discipline? We make petition, then, that He supply us
with the substance of His will, and the capacity to do it, that we may
be saved both in the heavens and on earth; because the sum of His will
is the salvation of them whom He has adopted. There is, too, that will
of God which the Lord accomplished in preaching, in working, in
enduring: for if He Himself proclaimed that He did not His own, but the
Father’s will, without doubt those things which He used to do
were the Father’s will;8786
unto which
things, as unto exemplars, we are now provoked;8787
to
preach, to work, to endure even unto death. And we need the will
of God, that we may be able to fulfil these duties. Again, in saying,
“Thy will be done,” we are even wishing well to ourselves,
in so far that there is nothing of evil in the will of God; even
if, proportionably to each one’s deserts, somewhat other8788
| 8788 [Something we
might think other than good.] | is imposed on us. So by this expression we
premonish our own selves unto patience. The Lord also, when He
had wished to demonstrate to us, even in His own flesh, the
flesh’s infirmity, by the reality of suffering, said,
“Father, remove this Thy cup;” and remembering Himself,
added, “save that not my will, but Thine be
done.”8789
Himself was
the Will and the Power of the Father: and yet, for the
demonstration of the patience which was due, He gave Himself up
to the Father’s Will.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
