{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050322.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050322.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050322.htm","text":"Chapter 75.\u2014Augustin Adduces in Reply Some Other Passages of Ambrose.\nI, too, will quote a passage out of this very work of St. Ambrose, from which our opponent has taken the statement which he deemed favourable for citation: \u201c\u2018It seemed good to me,\u2019\u201d he says; \u201cbut what he declares seemed good to him cannot have seemed good to him alone. For it is not simply to his human will that it seemed good, but also as it pleased Him, even Christ, who, says he, speaketh in me, who it is that causes that which is good in itself to seem good to ourselves also. For him on whom He has mercy He also calls. He, therefore, who follows Christ, when asked why he wished to be a Christian, can answer: \u2018It seemed good to me.\u2019 In saying this he does not deny that it also pleased God; for from God proceeds the preparation of man\u2019s will inasmuch as it is by God\u2019s grace that God is honoured by His saint.\u201d 1322 See now what your author must learn, if he takes pleasure in the words of Ambrose, how that man\u2019s will is prepared by God, and that it is of no importance, or, at any rate, does not much matter, by what means or at what time the preparation is accomplished, provided no doubt is raised as to whether the thing itself be capable of accomplishment without the grace of Christ. Then, again, how important it was that he should observe one line from the words of Ambrose which he quoted! For after that holy man had said, \u201cInasmuch as the Church has been gathered out of the world, that is, out p. 148 of sinful men, how can it be unpolluted when composed of such polluted material, except that, in the first place, it be washed of sins by the grace of Christ, and then, in the next place, abstain from sins through its nature of avoiding sin?\u201d\u2014he added the following sentence, which your author has refused to quote for a self-evident reason; for [Ambrose] says: \u201cIt was not from the first unpolluted, for that was impossible for human nature: but it is through God\u2019s grace and nature that because it no longer sins, it comes to pass that it seems unpolluted.\u201d 1323 Now who does not understand the reason why your author declined adding these words? It is, of course, so contrived in the discipline of the present life, that the holy Church shall arrive at last at that condition of most immaculate purity which all holy men desire; and that it may in the world to come, and in a state unmixed with anything of evil men, and undisturbed by any law of sin resisting the law of the mind, lead the purest life in a divine eternity. Still he should well observe what Bishop Ambrose says,\u2014and his statement exactly tallies with the Scriptures: \u201cIt was not from the first unpolluted, for that condition was impossible for human nature.\u201d By his phrase, \u201cfrom the first,\u201d he means indeed from the time of our being born of Adam. Adam no doubt was himself created immaculate; in the case, however, of those who are by nature children of wrath, deriving from him what in him was corrupted, he distinctly averred that it was an impossibility in human nature that they should be immaculate from the first.\nAmbrose on Luke i. 3.\n148:1323\nAmbrose on Luke i. 6.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise on Nat...","type":"page"}