Should the fact of God's unerring foreknowledge of the future disquiet anyone by suggesting that things have been necessarily determined, we must tell him that it is a real part of God's fixed knowledge that a particular man will not with any fixed certainty choose the better or so desire the worse as to become incapable of a change for his good. And again I will do this for this man when he prays, as becomes me seeing that he will pray without reproach and will not be negligent in prayer: upon that man who will pray for a certain amount, I will bestow this abundantly in excess of his asking or thinking, for it becomes me to surpass him in well doing and to furnish more than he has been capable of asking.
To this other man of a particular character I will send this angel as minister, to cooperate from a certain time in his salvation and to be with him for a certain period: to that other, who will be a better man than he, that angel of higher rank than his. From this man who, after having devoted himself to the higher views will gradually relax and fall back upon the more material, I will withdraw this superior cooperator, upon whose withdrawal that duly inferior power, having found an opportunity to get at his slackness, will set upon him and when he has given himself up in readiness to sin, will incite him to these particular sins. So we may imagine the Prearranger of All saying:
Amos will beget Josiah, who will not emulate his father's faults but will find his way leading on to virtue, and will by aid of these companions be noble and good, so that he will tear down the evilly erected altar of Jeroboam. I also know that Judas, in the sojourn of my son among the race of men, will at the first be noble and good but later turn aside and fall away to human sins so that he will rightly suffer thus for them. This foreknowledge, it may be in regard to all things, certainly in regard to Judas and other mysteries, exists in the Son of God also, who in His discernment of the evolution of the future has seen Judas and the sins to be committed by him, so that, even before Judas came into existence, He in His comprehension has said through David the words beginning "O God, keep you not silence at my praise."—Knowing as I do the future and what an influence Paul will have in the cause of religion, ere yet I set me to begin creation and found the world I will make choice of him: I will commit him from the moment of his birth to these powers that cooperate in men's salvation.
I will set him apart from his mother's womb. I will permit him at the first to fall in youth into an ignorant zeal and in the avowed cause of religion to persecute believers in my Christ and to keep the garments of them that stone my servant and witness Stephen, so that later at the close of his youthful wilfulness he may be given a fresh start and change for the best and yet not boast before me but may say: "I am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God," and realizing the kindness that he will receive from me after his faults committed in youth in the avowed cause of religion may declare "It is by God's grace that I am what I am"; and, being restrained by conscience by reason of the deeds he wrought while still young against Christ, he will not be excessively elated by the exceeding abundance of the revelations which in kindness I shall show him.
To the objection in reference to prayer for the rising of the Sun we may reply as follows. The Sun also possesses a certain free will, since he with the moon joins in praising God, for "Praise Him, Sun and Moon" it says: as also manifestly the moon and all the stars conformably, for it says "Praise Him all the stars and light." As, therefore, we have said that God has employed the free will of individual beings on earth for the service of beings on earth in arranging them aright, so we may suppose that He has employed the free will, fixed and certain and steadfast and wise as it is, of sun, moon and stars in arranging the whole world of heaven with the course and movement of the stars in harmony with the whole.
If I do not pray in vain for what concerns any other freewill, much more shall I pray for what concerns the freewill of the stars which tread in heaven their world-conserving measures. It may indeed be said of beings on earth that certain appearances in our surroundings call out now our instability, now our better inclination to act or speak in certain ways: but in the case of beings in heaven what appearances can interpose to oust and remove from the course that benefit the world beings which have each a life so adjusted by Reason independently of them, and which enjoy so ethereal and supremely pure a frame?
V. ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS: CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO PRAYER
With a view to impel men to pray and to turn them from neglect of prayer, we may not unreasonably further use an illustration such as this. Just as, apart from woman and apart from recourse to the function requisite for procreation, man cannot procreate, so one may not obtain certain things without prayer in a certain manner, with a certain disposition, with a certain faith, after a certain antecedent mode of life. Thus we are not to babble or ask for little things or pray for earthly things or enter upon prayer with anger and with thoughts disturbed.
Nor again is it possible to think of giving oneself to prayer apart from purification. Nor again is forgiveness of sins possible to the supplicant unless from the heart he forgives his brother who has done wrong and entreats him to obtain his pardon. That benefit accrues to him who prays rightly or according to his ability strives to do so, follows, I consider, in many ways: It is, first of all, surely in every sense a spiritual advantage to him who is intent upon prayer, in the very composure of prayer to present himself to God and in His presence to speak to Him with a vivid sense that he looks on and is present. For just as certain mental images and particular recollections connected with the objects recollected may sully the thoughts suggested by certain other images, in the same way we may believe that it is advantageous to remember God as the object of our faith—the One who discerns the movements within the inner sanctuary of the soul as it disposes itself to please the Examiner of Hearts and Inquisitor of Reins as One who is present and beholds and penetrates into every mind.
Even though further benefit than this be supposed to accrue to him who has composed his thoughts for prayer, no ordinary gain is to be conceived as gotten by one who has devoutly disposed himself in the season of prayer. When this is regularly practiced, how many sins it keeps us from, and how many achievements it brings us to, is known only to those who have given themselves up with some degree of constancy to prayer.
For if the recollection and recontemplation of a man who has found fame and benefit in wisdom incites us to evaluate him and sometimes restrains our lower impulses, how much more does the recollection of God the Father of All, along with prayer to Him, become advantageous to those who are persuaded that they stand before and speak to a present and hearing God!
What I have said may be established from the divine scriptures in the following way. He who prays must lift up holy hands, forgiving everyone who has wronged him, with the passion of anger banished from his soul and in wrath with none. And again, to prevent his mind from being made turbid by irrelevant thoughts, he must while at prayer forget for the time everything outside prayer—surely a state of supreme blessedness! As Paul teaches in the first Epistle to Timothy when he says: "I desire therefore that men pray in every place lifting up holy hands without anger and disputations. And further, a woman ought, most of all at prayer, to preserve simplicity and decency in soul and body, above all and especially while she prays reverencing God and expelling from her intellect every wanton womanish recollection, arrayed not in chaplets and gold or pearls or costly raiment, but in the things in which it becomes a woman of pious profession to be arrayed, (and I marvel that anyone should hesitate, were it on the strength of such a condition alone, to pronounce her blessed who has thus presented herself for prayer) as Paul has taught in the same Epistle when he says, "in like manner that women array themselves decently in simplicity with modesty and discretion, not in chaplets and gold or pearls or costly raiment, but, as becomes woman of pious profession, through good works." (1Tim.2:9)
And besides, the prophet David speaks of much else that the saint possesses in prayer. We may, not irreverently, cite these passages as showing that, even if this alone be considered, the attitude and preparation for prayer of one who has offered himself to God is of the highest benefit. He says: "Unto you have I lifted mine eyes, who dwellest in heaven and unto you have I lifted my soul, O God." For when the eyes of thought are lifted up from dwelling on earthly things and being filled with the imagination of material objects, and are elevated to such a height as to look beyond begotten things and to be engaged solely in contemplation of God and in solemn converse with Him becoming to the Hearer.
Surely those eyes themselves have already got the highest advantage in reflecting the glory of the Lord with face unveiled and being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, for they then partake of a certain divine perception shown by the words: "the light of your face, O Lord, hath been signalized upon us." (Ps.4:6) And indeed the soul being lifted up, and parting from body to follow spirit, and not only following the spirit but also merging in it, as is shown by the words "Unto you have I lifted my soul," is surely already putting off its existence as soul and becoming spiritual. And if forgiveness is a very high accomplishment, so high as according to the prophet Jeremiah to embrace a summary of the whole law, for he says, "I laid not those commands upon your fathers as they were gone forth from Egypt, but this command I laid:
Let each man not be unforgiving to his neighbor in his heart," and if in entering upon prayer with unforgiveness left behind us we keep the Savior's command, "If you're standing at prayer forgive aught that you have against any man." (Mk.11:25) It is plain that those who stand in that temper to pray have already received the best of possessions.
VI. ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS: HE WHO PRAYS PRAYS NOT ALONE
So far, I have said that, even on the supposition that nothing else is going to follow our prayer, we receive the best of gains when we have come to perceive the right way to pray and when we achieve it. But it is certain that he who thus prays, having previously cast aside all discontent with Providence, will, if intent to mark the inworking of the Hearer, in the very act hear the response "Here am I."
The above condition is expressed in the words "If you withdraw your bonds and protests and murmuring utterance," for he that is content with what comes to pass becomes free from every bond, and does not protest against God for ordaining what He wills for our discipline, and does not even in the secrecy of his thoughts murmur inaudibly; for they who murmur thus, not daring to abuse Providence roundly for what occurs with voice and soul but desiring as it were to escape the observation even of the Lord of All in their discontent, are like bad domestics who rail, but not openly, against their masters' orders.
And I think the same thing is meant in the passage in Job: "In all these ocurrences Job sinned not with his lips in the sight of God"; and it is just this that the saying in Deuteronomy enjoins must not happen, when it says: "Take heed lest a secret utterance be ever in your heart to break the law, saying the seventh year draws nigh" and so on. So then he who prays thus, becomes, as already so greatly benefited, more fit to mingle with the Spirit of the Lord that fills the whole world and fills all the earth and the heaven and says by the prophet: "'Do not I fill the heaven and the earth?' says the Lord."
And further, through the afore mentioned purification as well as through prayer, he will enjoy the good office of the Word of God, who is standing in the midst even of those who do not know Him and who fails the prayer of none, to pray to the Father along with Him for whom He mediates. For the Son of God is high priest of our offerings and our pleader with the Father. He prays for those who pray, and pleads along with those who plead. He will not, however, consent to pray, as for his intimates, on behalf of those who do not with some constancy pray through Him, nor will he be Pleader with the Father, as for men already His own, on behalf of those who do not obey His teaching to the effect that they ought at all times to pray and not lose heart.
For it says, "He spoke a parable to the end that they ought at all times to pray and not lose heart. 'There was a certain judge in a certain city,'" and so on; and earlier he said unto them, "Who of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight and shall say to him:
Friend, lend me three loaves since a friend of mine has come to me after a journey and I have naught to set before him"; and a little later, "I tell you, even though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, he will yet because of his being unabashed get up and give him as many as he wants." And who that believes the guileless lips of Jesus can but be stirred to unhesitating prayer when He says, "Ask and it shall be given you for everyone that asks receives," since the kind Father gives to those who have received the spirit of adoption from the Father, the living bread when we ask Him, not the stone which the adversary would have become food for Jesus and His disciples, and since The Father gives the good gift in rain from heaven to those that ask him.
But these pray along with those who genuinely pray—not only the high priest but also the angels who "rejoice in heaven over one repenting sinner more than over ninety-nine righteous that need not repentance," and also the souls of the saints already at rest. Two instances make this plain. The first is where Raphael offers their service to God for Tobit and Sarah. After both had prayed, the scripture says, "The prayer of both was heard before the presence of the great Raphael and he was sent to heal them both," and Raphael himself, when explaining his angelic commission at God's command to help them, says:
"Even now when you prayed, and Sarah your daughter-in-law, I brought the memorial of your prayer before the Holy One," and shortly after, "I am Raphael, one of the Seven angels who present the prayers of saints and enter in before the glory of the Holy One. Thus, according to Raphael's account at least, prayer with fasting and almsgiving and righteousness is a good thing.
The second instance is in the Books of the Maccabees where Jeremiah appears in exceeding "white haired glory" so that a wondrous and most majestic authority was about him, and stretches forth his right hand and delivers to Judas a golden sword, and there witnesses to him another saint already at rest saying, "This is he who prays much for the people and the sacred city, God's prophet Jeremiah." For it is absurd when knowledge, though manifested to the worthy through a mirror and in a riddle for the present, is then revealed face to face not to think that the like is true of all other excellences as well, that they who prepare in this life beforehand are made strictly perfect then.