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AND this plainly teaches us that the beginning of our good will is
given to us by the inspiration of the Lord, when He draws us towards the
way of salvation either by His own act, or by the exhortations of some man,
or by compulsion; and that the consummation of our good deeds is granted by
Him in the same way: but that it is in our own power to follow up the
encouragement and assistance of God with more or less zeal, and that
accordingly we are rightly visited either with reward or with punishment,
because we have been either careless or careful to correspond to His design
and providential arrangement made for us with such kindly regard. And this
is clearly and plainly described in Deuteronomy. "When," says he, "the Lord
thy God shall have brought thee into the land which thou art going to
possess, and shall have destroyed many nations before thee, the Hittite,
and the Gergeshite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the
Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations much more numerous than thou art
and stronger than thou, and the Lord thy God shall have delivered them to
thee, thou shalt utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no league with
them. Neither shalt thou make marriage with them." So then Scripture
declares that it is the free gift of God that they are brought into the
land of promise, that many nations are destroyed before them, that nations
more numerous and mightier than the people of Israel are given up into
their hands. But whether Israel utterly destroys them, or whether it
preserves them alive and spares them, and whether or no it makes a league
with them, and makes marriages with them or not, it declares lies in their
own power. And by this testimony we can clearly see what we ought to
ascribe to free will, and what to the design and daily assistance of the
Lord, and that it belongs to divine grace to give us opportunities of
salvation and prosperous undertakings and victory: but that it is ours to
follow up the blessings which God gives us with earnestness or
indifference. And this same fact we see is plainly taught in the healing of
the blind men. For the fact that Jesus passed by them, was a free gift of
Divine providence and condescension. But the fact that they cried out and
said "Have mercy on us, Lord, thou son of David," was an act of their
own faith and belief. That they received the sight of their eyes was a gift
of Divine pity. But that after the reception of any blessing, the grace of
God, and the use of free will both remain, the case of the ten lepers, who
were all healed alike, shows us. For when one of them through goodness of
will returned thanks, the Lord looking for the nine, and praising the one,
showed that He was ever anxious to help even those who were unmindful of
His kindness. For even this is a gift of His visitation; viz., that he
receives and commends the grateful one, and looks for and censures those
who are thankless.
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