They knew that the end of the Law was none other than the Holy Spirit, and thus as men certainly had this without circumcision, circumcision was not needful.
But to preserve pre-eminence to himself he gives prayer to whom he pleases.
1. To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causality.
2. To teach us from whom our virtue comes.
3. To make us deserve other virtues by work.
_Objection._ But we believe that prayer comes from ourselves.
This is absurd, for since before we have faith, we cannot have virtues, how should we have faith? Is there a greater distance between infidelity and faith than between faith and virtue?
God is only bound according to his promises.
He has promised to do justice to prayer, he has never promised prayer only to the children of promise.
_Si_ does not mark indifference. Malachi, Isaiah.
_Ne timeas, pusillus grex. Timore et tretmore.--Quid ergo? Ne timeas, modo timeas._
Fear not, provided you fear, but if you fear not, then fear.
_Qui me recipit, non me recipit, sed eum qui me misit._
Saint John was to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and Jesus Christ was to sow division. In this there is no contradiction.
The effects _in communi_ and _in particulari_. The semi-Pelagians err in saying of _in communi_ what is true only _in particulari_, and the Calvinists in saying _in particulari_ what is true _in communi_. So it seems to me.
Saint Augustine has said expressly that power would be taken away from the righteous. But it is by chance that he said it, for it might have been that the chance of saying it did not occur. But his principles make us see that when the occasion for it presented itself, it was impossible he should not say so, or that he should say anything to the contrary. It is then rather that he was forced to say it, when the occasion offered itself, than that he said it, the occasion having offered itself, the one being of necessity, the other of chance. But the two are all that we could ask.
_The end_. Are we certain? Is this principle certain? Let us examine.
The testimony of a man's self is naught Saint Thomas.
The image alone of all these mysteries has been openly showed to the Jews and by Saint John the forerunner, and then the other mysteries, to mark that in each man as in the world at large this order must be observed.