Philippians 2:12

3. “Watch, therefore, and pray that you enter not into temptation.” Such prayer is indeed in itself an admonition to you that you need the help of the Lord, and that you ought not to rest upon yourself your hope of living well. For now you pray, not that you may obtain the riches and honours of this present world, or any unsubstantial human possession, but that you may not enter into temptation, a thing which would not be asked in prayer if a man could accomplish it for himself by his own will. Wherefore we would not pray that we may not enter into temptation if our own will sufficed for our protection and yet if the will to avoid temptation were wanting to us, we could not so pray. It may, therefore, be present with us to will, when we have through his own gift been made wise, but we must pray that we may be able to perform that which we have so willed. …

The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us prove from Scripture. The apostle “desires to depart, and to be with Christ.” And, “My soul desired to long for Thy judgments;” or if it is more appropriate to say, “My soul longed to desire Thy judgments.” And, “The desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom.” Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. …

22. But the pleasure of the Creator, of which is written, “And from the river of Thy pleasure wilt Thou give them to drink,” is of far other kind, for it is not, like us, a creature. Unless then its love be given to us from thence there is no source whence it may be in us. And consequently, a good will, by which we love God, cannot be in man, save in whom God also worketh to will. This good will therefore, that is, a will faithfully subjected to God, a will set on fire by sanctity of that ardor which is above, a will which loves God and his neighbor for God’s sake; whether through love, of which the Apostle Peter makes answer, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee;” whether through fear, of which says the Apostle Paul, “In fear and trembling work out your own salvation;” whether through joy, of which he says, “In hope rejoicing, in tribulation patient;” whether through sorrow, with which …

“But God,” they say, “is able to heal all things.” Of course His purpose in acting is to heal all things; but He acts on His own judgment, and does not take His procedure in healing from the sick man. For undoubtedly it was His wish to endow His apostle with very great power and strength, and yet He said to him: “My strength is made perfect in weakness;” nor did He remove from him, though he so often entreated Him to do so, that mysterious “thorn in the flesh,” which He told him had been given to him “lest he should be unduly exalted through the abundance of the revelation.” For all other sins only prevail in evil deeds; pride only has to be guarded against in things that are rightly done. …

So will He bestow on us whatever pleases Him, that if there be anything displeasing to Him in us, it will also be displeasing to us. “He will,” as the Scripture has said, “turn aside our paths from His own way,” and will make that which is His own to be our way; because it is by Himself that the favour is bestowed on such as believe in Him and hope in Him that we will do it. For there is a way of righteousness of which they are ignorant “who have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge,” and who, wishing to frame a righteousness of their own, “have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.” “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth;” and He has said, “I am the way.” Yet God’s voice has alarmed those who have already begun to walk in this way, lest they should be lifted up, as if it were by their own energies that they were walking …

The whole of this dogma of Pelagius, observe, is carefully expressed in these words, and none other, in the third book of his treatise in defence of the liberty of the will, in which he has taken care to distinguish with so great subtlety these three things, the “capacity,” the “volition,” and the “action,” that is, the “ability,” the “volition,” and the “actuality,”, that, whenever we read or hear of his acknowledging the assistance of divine grace in order to our avoidance of evil and accomplishment of good, whatever he may mean by the said assistance of grace, whether law and the teaching or any other thing, we are sure of what he says; nor can we run into any mistake by understanding him otherwise than he means. …

Perhaps you ask whether we ever read in the Sacred Scriptures of “ grace for grace .” Well you possess the Gospel according to John, which is perfectly clear in its very great light. Here John the Baptist says of Christ: “Of His fulness have we all received, even grace for grace .” So that out of His fulness we have received, according to our humble measure, our particles of ability as it were for leading good lives, “according as God hath dealt to every man his measure of faith;” because “every man hath his proper gift of God; one after this manner, and another after that.” And this is grace. …

To such as love Him, God co-worketh with all things for good; so absolutely all things, that even if any of them go astray, and break out of the way, even this itself He makes to avail them for good, so that they return more lowly and more instructed. For they learn that in the right way itself they ought to rejoice with trembling; not with arrogation to themselves of confidence of abiding as if by their own strength; not with saying, in their abundance, “We shall not be moved for ever.” For which reason it is said to them, “Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice unto Him with trembling, lest at any time the Lord should be angry, and ye perish from the right way.” For He does not say, “And ye come not into the right way;” but He says, “Lest ye perish from the right way.” And what does this show, but that those who are already walking in the right way are reminded to serve God in fear; that …

From all which it is shown with sufficient clearness that the grace of God, which both begins a man’s faith and which enables it to persevere unto the end, is not given according to our merits, but is given according to His own most secret and at the same time most righteous, wise, and beneficent will; since those whom He predestinated, them He also called, with that calling of which it is said, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” To which calling there is no man that can be said by men with any certainty of affirmation to belong, until he has departed from this world; but in this life of man, which is a state of trial upon the earth, he who seems to stand must take heed lest he fall. …

3. But wonderful it is, that when Christ Crucified is preached, two hear, one despiseth, the other ascendeth. Let him that despiseth, impute it to himself; let not him that ascendeth, arrogate it to himself. For he hath heard from the True Master; “No man cometh unto Me, except it were given unto him of My Father.” Let him joy, that it hath been given; let him render thanks to Him who giveth it, with a humble, not an arrogant heart; lest what he hath attained through humility, he lose through pride. For even they who are already walking in this way of righteousness, if they attribute it to themselves, and to their own strength, perish out of it. …

3. “And greater works than these shall he do.” Than what, pray? Shall we say that one is doing greater works than all that Christ did who is working out his own salvation with fear and trembling? A work which Christ is certainly working in him, but not without him; and one which I might, without hesitation, call greater than the heavens and the earth, and all in both within the compass of our vision. For both heaven and earth shall pass away, but the salvation and justi fication of those predestinated thereto, that is, of those whom He foreknoweth, shall continue forever. In the former there is only the working of God, but in the latter there is also His image. …

9. “And the just shall see, and shall fear; and over him they shall laugh” ( ver. 7 ). Shall fear when? Shall laugh when? Let us therefore understand, and make a distinction between those two times of fearing and laughing, which have their several uses. For so long as we are in this world, not yet must we laugh, lest hereafter we mourn. We have read what is reserved at the end for this Doeg, we have read and because we understand and believe, we see but fear. …