Good Will Begins and Ends with God

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 toward the way of salvation, either by his own act, or through the urging of some person, or by compulsion; and that the completion of our good deeds is granted by him in the same way. But it is in our own power to follow up the encouragement and help of God with more or less zeal. And accordingly we are rightly visited with either reward or punishment, because we have been either careless or careful to respond to his plan and to the providential arrangement he made for us with such kind regard. [a]

This is clearly and plainly described in Deuteronomy: “When the Lord your God,” he says, “has brought you into the land you are going in to possess, and has destroyed many nations before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations much more numerous than you and stronger than you, and the Lord your God has handed them over to you, you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no treaty with them. Nor shall you intermarry with them.” So 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, and that nations more numerous and mightier than the people of Israel are handed over to them. But whether Israel utterly destroys them or keeps them alive and spares them, whether or not it makes a treaty with them, and whether or not it intermarries with them, Scripture declares to lie in their own power. By this testimony we can clearly see what we ought to credit to free will, and what to the plan and daily help of the Lord: that it belongs to divine grace to give us opportunities of salvation, and successful undertakings, and victory; but that it is ours to follow up the blessings God gives us with earnestness or with indifference.

We see this same fact plainly taught in the healing of the blind men. That Jesus passed by them was a free gift of divine providence and of God’s stooping down to them. But that they cried out and said, “Have mercy on us, Lord, 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 compassion. But that both the grace of God and the use of free will remain after any blessing has been received is shown by the case of the ten lepers, who were all healed alike. For when one of them, out of goodness of will, returned to give thanks, the Lord asked after the nine and praised the one, and so showed that he was always eager to help even those who were unmindful of his kindness. For even this is a gift of his visiting us: that he receives and commends the grateful one, and looks for and rebukes those who are thankless.