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BUT let no one imagine that we have brought forward these instances to
try to make out that the chief share in our salvation rests with our faith,
according to the profane notion of some who attribute everything to free
will and lay down that the grace of God is dispensed in accordance with the
desert of each man: but we plainly assert our unconditional opinion that
the grace of God is superabounding, and sometimes overflows the narrow
limits of man's lack of faith. And this, as we remember, happened in the
case of the ruler in the gospel, who, as he believed that it was an easier
thing for his son to be cured when sick than to be raised when dead,
implored the Lord to come at once, saying: "Lord, come down ere my child
die;" and though Christ reproved his lack of faith with these words:
"Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe," yet He did not
manifest the grace of His Divinity in proportion to the weakness of his
faith, nor did He expell the deadly disease of the fever by His bodily
presence, as the man believed he would, but by the word of His power,
saying: "Go thy way, thy son liveth." And we read also that the Lord
poured forth this superabundance of grace in the case of the cure of the
paralytic, when, though he only asked for the healing of the weakness by
which his body was enervated, He first brought health to the soul by
sating: "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." After which,
when the scribes did not believe that He could forgive men's sins, in order
to confound their incredulity, He set free by the power of His word the
man's limb, and put an end to his disease of paralysis, by saying: "Why
think ye evil in. your hearts? Whether is easier to say, thy sins be
forgiven thee, or to say, arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son
of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, then saith He to the sick of
the palsy: Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." And in the
same way in the case of the man who had been lying for thirty-eight years
near the edge of the pool, and hoping for a cure from the moving of the
water, He showed the princely character of His bounty unasked. For when in
His wish to arouse him for the saving remedy, He had said to him: "wiliest
thou to be made whole," and when the man complained of his lack of human
assistance and said: "I have no man to put me into the pool when the water
is troubled," the Lord in His pity granted pardon to his unbelief and
ignorance, and restored him to his former health, not in the way which he
expected, but in the way which He Himself willed, saying: "Arise, take up
thy bed and go unto thine house." And what wonder if these acts are told
of the Lord's power, when Divine grace has actually wrought similar works
by means of His servants! For when Peter and John were entering the temple,
when the man who was lame from his mother's womb and had no idea how to
walk, asked an alms, they gave him not the miserable coppers which the sick
man asked for, but the power to walk, and when he was only expecting the
smallest of gifts to console him, enriched him with the prize of unlooked
for health, as Peter said: "Silver and gold have I none: but such as I
have, give I unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up
and walk."
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