{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/211/2110586.htm","path":"chr/ecf/211/2110586.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/211/2110586.htm","text":"Of the three origins of our thoughts.\nAbove all we ought at least to know that there are three origins of our thoughts, i.e., from God, from the devil, and from ourselves. They come from God when He vouchsafes to visit us with the illumination of the Holy Ghost, lifting us up to a higher state of progress, and where we have made but little progress, or through acting slothfully have been overcome, He chastens us with most salutary compunction, or when He discloses to us heavenly mysteries, or turns our purpose and will to better actions, as in the case where the king Ahasuerus, being chastened by the Lord, was prompted to ask for the books of the annals, by which he was reminded of the good deeds of Mordecai, and promoted him to a position of the highest honour and at once recalled his most cruel sentence concerning the slaughter of the Jews. 1132 Or when the prophet says: \u201cI will hearken what the Lord God will say in me.\u201d 1133 Another too tells us \u201cAnd an angel spoke, and said in me,\u201d 1134 or when the Son of God promised that He would come with His Father, and make His abode in us, 1135 and \u201cIt is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.\u201d 1136 And the chosen vessel: \u201cYe seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me.\u201d 1137 But a whole range of thoughts springs from the devil, when he endeavours to destroy us either by the pleasures of sin or by secret attacks, in his crafty wiles deceitfully showing us evil as good, and transforming himself into an angel of light to us: 1138 as when the evangelist tells us: \u201cAnd when supper was ended, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon\u2019s son, to betray\u201d 1139 the Lord: and again also \u201cafter the sop,\u201d he says, \u201cSatan entered into him.\u201d 1140 Peter also says to Ananias: \u201cWhy hath Satan tempted thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?\u201d 1141 And that which we read in the gospel much earlier as predicted by Ecclesiastes: \u201cIf the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place.\u201d 1142 That too which is said to God against Ahab in the third book of Kings, in the character of an unclean spirit: \u201cI will go forth and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.\u201d 1143 But they arise from ourselves, when in the course of nature we recollect what we are doing or have done or have heard. Of which the blessed David speaks: \u201cI thought upon the ancient days, and had in mind the years from of old, and I meditated, by night I exercised myself with my heart, and searched out my spirit.\u201d 1144 And again: \u201cthe Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vain:\u201d 1145 and \u201cthe thoughts of the righteous are judgments.\u201d 1146 In the gospel too the Lord says to the Pharisees: \u201cwhy do ye think evil in your hearts?\u201d 1147\nCf. Esth. vi. 1 sq.\n304:1133 304:1134 304:1135\nCf. S. John xiv. 23.\n304:1136\nS. Matt. x. 20.\n304:1137 304:1138\nCf. 2 Cor. xi. 4.\n304:1139\nS. John xiii. 2.\n304:1140 304:1141 304:1142 304:1143 304:1144\nPs. 77:6, 7. Scobebam(which Petschenig edits from the mss.) = scopebam, which is found in the Gallican Psalter as in the old Latin in this passage. It is merely a Latinized form of \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd.\n304:1145 304:1146 304:1147\nS. Matt. ix. 4.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XI: The Wor...","type":"page"}