{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050837.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050837.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050837.htm","text":"Chapter 38 [XX.]\u2014The Power of God\u2019s Grace is Proved.\nThat this is true we do not surmise by human conjecture, but we discern by the most evident authority of the divine Scriptures. It is read in the books of the Chronicles: \u201cAlso in Judah, the hand of God was made to give them one heart, to do the commandment of the king and of the princes in the word of the Lord.\u201d 2609 Also by Ezekiel the prophet the Lord says, \u201cI will give them another heart, and a new spirit will I give them; and I will take away their stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them an heart of flesh, that they may walk in my commandments and observe my judgments and do them.\u201d 2610 And what is that which Esther the queen prays when she says, \u201cGive me eloquent speech in my mouth, and enlighten my words in the sight of the lion, and turn his heart to hatred of him that fighteth against us\u201d? 2611 How does she say such things as these in her prayer to God, if God does not work His will in men\u2019s hearts? But perchance the woman was foolish in praying thus. Let us see, then, whether the desire of the petitioner was vainly sent on in advance, and whether the result did not follow as of one who heard. Lo, she goes in to the king. We need not say much. And because she did not approach him in her own order, under the compulsion of her great necessity, \u201che looked upon her,\u201d as it is written, \u201clike a bull in the impulse of his indignation. And the queen feared, and her colour was changed through faintness, and she bowed herself upon the head of her maid, who went before her. And God changed him, and converted his indignation into mildness.\u201d 2612 Now what need is there to relate what follows, where the divine Scripture testifies that God fulfilled what she had asked for by working in the heart of the king nothing other than the will by which he commanded, and it was done as the queen had asked of him? And now God had heard her that it should be done, who changed the heart of the king by a most secret and efficacious power before he had heard the address of the woman beseeching him, and moulded it from indignation to mildness,\u2014that is, from the will to hurt, to the will to favour,\u2014according to that word of the apostle, \u201cGod worketh in you to will also.\u201d Did the men of God who wrote these things\u2014nay, did the Spirit of God Himself, under whose guidance such things were written by them\u2014assail the free will of man? Away with the notion! But He has commended both the most righteous judgment and the most merciful aid of the Omnipotent in all cases. For it is enough for man to know that there is no unrighteousness with God. But how He dispenses those benefits, making some deservedly vessels of wrath, others graciously vessels of mercy,\u2014who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor? If, then, we attain to the honour of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing to ourselves what we have received. \u201cFor what have we which we have not received?\u201d 2613","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise Agains...","type":"page"}