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| Chapter III. The answer that without God's help not only perfect chastity but all good of every kind cannot be performed.
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Chapter III.
The answer that without God’s help not only
perfect chastity but all good of every kind cannot be performed.
Chæremon: By this
very instance which you bring forward we can still more clearly prove
that the exertions of the worker can do nothing without God’s
aid. For neither can the husbandman, when he has spent the utmost pains
in cultivating the ground, forthwith ascribe the produce of the crops
and the rich fruits to his own exertions, as he finds that these are
often in vain unless opportune rains and a quiet and calm winter aids
them, so that we have often seen fruits already ripe and set and
thoroughly matured snatched as it were from the hands of those who were
grasping them; and their continuous and earnest efforts were of no use
to the workers because they were not under the guidance of the
Lord’s assistance. As then the Divine goodness does not grant
these rich crops to idle husbandmen who do not till their fields by
frequent ploughing, so also toil all night long is of no use to the
workers unless the mercy of the Lord prospers it. But herein human
pride should never try to put itself on a level with the grace of God
or to intermingle itself with it, so as to fancy that its own efforts
were the cause of Divine bounty, or to boast that a very plentiful crop
of fruits was an answer to the merits of its own exertions. For a man
should consider and with a most careful scrutiny weigh the fact that he
could not by his own strength apply those very efforts which he has
earnestly used in his desire for wealth, unless the Lord’s
protection and pity had given him strength for the performance of all
agricultural labours; and that his own will and strength would have
been powerless unless Divine compassion had supplied the means for the
completion of them, as they sometimes fail either from too much or from
too little rain. For when vigour has been granted by the Lord to the
oxen, and bodily health and the power to do all the work, and
prosperity in undertakings, still a man must pray lest there come to
him, as Scripture says, “a heaven of brass and an earth of
iron,” and “the cankerworm eat what the locust hath left,
and the palmerworm eat what the cankerworm hath left, and the mildew
destroys what the palmerworm hath left.”1747
Nor is it only in this that the efforts
of the husbandman in his work need God’s help, unless it also
averts unlooked for accidents by which, even when the field is rich
with the expected fruitful crops, not only is the man deprived of what
he has vainly hoped and looked for, but actually loses the abundant
fruits which he has already gathered and stored up in the threshing
floor or in the barn. From which we clearly infer that the initiative
not only of our actions but also of good thoughts comes from God, who
inspires us with a good will to begin with, and supplies us with the
opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire: for “every
good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above, from the
Father of lights,”1748
who both
begins what is good, and continues it and completes it in us, as the
Apostle says: “But He who giveth seed to the sower will both
provide bread to eat and will multiply your seed and make the fruits of
your righteousness to increase.”1749
But it is for us,
humbly to follow day by day the grace of God which is drawing us, or
else if we resist with “a stiff neck,” and (to use the
words of Scripture) “uncircumcised ears,”1750
we shall deserve to hear the words of
Jeremiah: “Shall he that falleth, not rise again? and he that is
turned away, shall he not turn again? Why then is this people in
Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn revolting? They have stiffened
their necks and refused to return.”1751
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