{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050860.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050860.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050860.htm","text":"Chapter 18.\u2014The Desire of Good is God\u2019s Gift.\nFor they have thought that it was to be objected to us that we say \u201cthat God inspires into unwilling and resisting man the desire,\u201d not of any very great good, but \u201ceven of imperfect good.\u201d Possibly, then, they themselves are keeping open, in some sense at least, a place for grace, as thinking that man may have the desire of good without grace, but only of imperfect good; while of perfect, he could not easily have the desire with grace, but except with it they could not have it at all. Truly, even in this way, too, they are saying that God\u2019s grace is given according to our merits, which Pelagius, in the ecclesiastical meeting in the East, condemned, in the fear of being condemned. For if without God\u2019s grace the desire of good begins with ourselves, merit itself will have begun\u2014to which, as if of debt, comes the assistance of grace; and thus God\u2019s grace will not be bestowed freely, but will be given according to our merit. But that he might furnish a reply to the future Pelagius, the Lord does not say, \u201cWithout me it is with difficulty that you can do anything,\u201d but He says, \u201cWithout me ye can do nothing.\u201d 2655 And, that He might also furnish an answer to these future heretics, in that very same evangelical saying He does not say, \u201cWithout me you can perfect nothing,\u201d but \u201cdo\u201d nothing. For if He had said \u201cperfect,\u201d they might say that God\u2019s aid is necessary not for beginning good, which is of ourselves, but for perfecting it. But let them hear also the apostle. For when the Lord says, \u201cWithout me ye can do nothing,\u201d in this one word He comprehends both the beginning and the ending. The apostle, indeed, as if he were an expounder of the Lord\u2019s saying, distinguished both very clearly when he says, \u201cBecause p. 400 He who hath begun a good work in you will perfect it even to the day of Christ Jesus.\u201d 2656 But in the Holy Scriptures, in the writings of the same apostle, we find more about that of which we are speaking. For we are now speaking of the desire of good, and if they will have this to begin of ourselves and to be perfected by God, let them see what they can answer to the apostle when he says, \u201cNot that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.\u201d 2657 \u201cTo think anything,\u201d he says,\u2014he certainly means, \u201cto think anything good;\u201d but is it less to think than to desire. Because we think all that we desire, but we do not desire all that we think; because sometimes also we think what we do not desire. Since, then, it is a smaller thing to think than to desire,\u2014for a man may think good which he does not yet desire, and by advancing may afterwards desire what before without desire he thought of,\u2014how are we not sufficient as of ourselves to that which is less, that is, to the thinking of something good, but our sufficiency is of God; while to that which is greater,\u2014that is, to the desire of some good thing\u2014without the divine help, we are sufficient of free will? For what the apostle says here is not, \u201cNot that we are sufficient as of ourselves to think that which is perfect;\u201d but he says, \u201cto think anything,\u201d to which \u201cnothing\u201d is the contrary. And this is the meaning of what the Lord says, \u201cWithout me ye can do nothing.\u201d","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise Agains...","type":"page"}