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| Chapter XIX. That the beginning of our good will and its completion comes from God.
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Chapter XIX.
That the beginning of our good will and its completion
comes from God.
And this plainly teaches us
that the beginning of our good will is given to us by the inspiration
of the Lord, when He draws us towards the way of salvation either by
His own act, or by the exhortations of some man, or by compulsion; and
that the consummation of our good deeds is granted by Him in the same
way: but that it is in our own power to follow up the encouragement and
assistance of God with more or less zeal, and that accordingly we are
rightly visited either with reward or with punishment, because we have
been either careless or careful to correspond to His design and
providential arrangement made for us with such kindly regard. And this
is clearly and plainly described in Deuteronomy. “When,”
says he, “the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land
which thou art going to possess, and shall have destroyed many nations
before thee, the Hittite, and the Gergeshite, and the Amorite, the
Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven
nations much more numerous than thou art and stronger than thou, and
the Lord thy God shall have delivered them to thee, thou shalt utterly
destroy them.
Thou shalt make
no league with them. Neither shalt thou make marriage with
them.”1279
So then
Scripture declares that it is the free gift of God that they are
brought into the land of promise, that many nations are destroyed
before them, that nations more numerous and mightier than the people of
Israel are given up into their hands. But whether Israel utterly
destroys them, or whether it preserves them alive and spares them, and
whether or no it makes a league with them, and makes marriages with
them or not, it declares lies in their own power. And by this testimony
we can clearly see what we ought to ascribe to free will, and what to
the design and daily assistance of the Lord, and that it belongs to
divine grace to give us opportunities of salvation and prosperous
undertakings and victory: but that it is ours to follow up the
blessings which God gives us with earnestness or indifference. And this
same fact we see is plainly taught in the healing of the blind men. For
the fact that Jesus passed by them, was a free gift of Divine
providence and condescension. But the fact that they cried out and said
“Have mercy on us, Lord, thou son of David,”1280
was an act of their own faith and belief.
That they received the sight of their eyes was a gift of Divine pity.
But that after the reception of any blessing, the grace of God, and the
use of free will both remain, the case of the ten lepers, who were all
healed alike, shows us. For when one of them through goodness of will
returned thanks, the Lord looking for the nine, and praising the one,
showed that He was ever anxious to help even those who were unmindful
of His kindness. For even this is a gift of His visitation; viz., that
he receives and commends the grateful one, and looks for and censures
those who are thankless.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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