{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050941.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050941.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050941.htm","text":"Chapter 7.\u2014Grace is Necessary Along with Free Will to Lead a Good Life.\nTherefore, my dearly beloved, as we have now proved by our former testimonies from Holy Scripture that there is in man a free determination of will for living rightly and acting rightly; so now let us see what are the divine testimonies concerning the grace of God, without which we are not able to do any good thing. And first of all, I will say something about the very profession which you make in your brotherhood. Now your society, in which you are leading lives of continence, could not hold together unless you dep. 447 spised conjugal pleasure. Well, the Lord was one day conversing on this very topic, when His disciples remarked to Him, \u201cIf such be the case of a man with his wife, it is not good to marry.\u201d He then answered them, \u201cAll men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.\u201d 2997 And was it not to Timothy\u2019s free will that the apostle appealed, when he exhorted him in these words: \u201cKeep thyself continent\u201d? 2998 He also explained the power of the will in this matter when He said, \u201cHaving no necessity, but possessing power over his own will, to keep his virgin.\u201d 2999 And yet \u201call men do not receive this saying, except those to whom the power is given.\u201d Now they to whom this is not given either are unwilling or do not fulfil what they will; whereas they to whom it is given so will as to accomplish what they will. In order, therefore, that this saying, which is not received by all men, may yet be received by some, there are both the gift of God and free will.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise on Gra...","type":"page"}