{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050862.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050862.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050862.htm","text":"Chapter 20.\u2014God\u2019s Agency is Needful Even in Man\u2019s Doings.\nFor as it is said, \u201cIt is man\u2019s part to prepare his heart, and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord;\u201d so also is it said, \u201cOpen thy mouth, and I will fill it.\u201d 2661 For although, save by His assistance without whom we can do nothing, we cannot open our mouth, yet we open it by His aid and by our own agency, while the Lord fills it without our agency. For what is to prepare the heart and to open the mouth, but to prepare the will? And yet in the same scriptures is read, \u201cThe will is prepared by the Lord,\u201d 2662 and, \u201cThou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.\u201d 2663 So God admonishes us to prepare our will in what we read,\u201d It is man\u2019s part to prepare his heart;\u201d and yet, that man may do this, God helps him, because the will is prepared by the Lord. And,\u201d Open thy mouth.\u201d This He so says by way of command, as that nobody can do this unless it is done by His aid, to whom it is said, \u201cThou shalt open my lips.\u201d Are any of these men so foolish as to contend that the mouth is one thing, the lips another; and to say with marvellous triviality that man opens his own mouth, and God opens man\u2019s lips? And yet God restrains them from even that absurdity where He says to Moses His servant, \u201cI will open thy mouth, and I will instruct thee what thou oughtest to speak.\u201d 2664 In that clause, therefore, where He says, \u201cOpen thy mouth and I will fill it,\u201d it seems, as it were, that one of them pertains to man, the other to God. But in this, where it is said, \u201cI will open thy mouth and will instruct thee,\u201d both belong to God. Why is this, except that in one of these cases He co-operates with man as the agent, in the other He does it alone?","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise Agains...","type":"page"}