Next week we read from Esther in the Office
of Readings.
How has the Lord commanded us to pray for those
who persecute us? Do we pray thus, that the grace of God may be recompensed in
them for the sake of their good will, and not rather that the evil will itself
may be changed into a good one? But how many enemies of Christ are at the
present day suddenly attracted by God's secret grace to Christ! Nobody can come
to me without being attracted towards me by the Father who sent me. For he does not say, "without being
led", so that we can thus in any way understand that his will precedes.
For who is attracted, if he was already willing? And yet no man comes unless he
is willing. Therefore, he is attracted in wondrous ways to will, by him who
knows how to work within the very hearts of men. Not that men who are unwilling
should believe, which cannot be, but that they should be made willing from
being unwilling.
And what is that which Esther the queen prays when
she says, Form my utterance, as I speak with this fierce lord of mine, and
embitter him against our enemy? How does she say such things as these in her
prayer to God, if God does not work his will in men's hearts? But perchance the
woman was foolish in praying thus. Let us see, then, whether the desire of the
petitioner was vainly sent on in advance, and whether the results did not
follow as of one who heard. Lo, she goes in to the king. We need not say much.
And because she did not approach him in her own order, under the compulsion of
her great necessity, he looked upon her, as it is written, like a bull in the
impulse of his indignation. And the queen feared, and her color was changed
through faintness, and she bowed herself upon the head of her maid, who went
before her. And God changed him, and converted his indignation into mildness. Now
what need is there to relate what follows, where the divine Scripture testifies
that God fulfilled what she had asked for by working in the heart of the king;
what else than the will by which he commanded, and it was done as the queen had
asked of him? And now God had heard her that it should be done, who changed the
heart of the king by a most secret and efficacious power before he had heard
the address of the woman beseeching him, and molded it from indignation to
mildness—that is, from the will to hurt, to the will to favor—according to that
word of the apostle, God worketh in you to will.
Did the men of God who wrote these things—nay, did
the Spirit of God himself, under whose guidance such things were written by
them—assail the free-will of man? Away with the notion! But he commended both
the righteous judgement and the most merciful aid of the Omnipotent in all
cases. For it is enough for man to know that there is no unrighteousness with
God. But as to how he dispenses those benefits, making some deservedly objects
of his vengeance, others graciously objects of his mercy—who hath forwarded the
spirit of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor? If, then, we attain to the
honor of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing ourselves what we have
received. For what powers have we that did not come to us by gift?
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