Free Will Always Needs the Lord’s Help

You have noticed shrewdly enough how it says, “If they had listened to me.” But you have not considered carefully enough who it is who speaks to the one who listens or does not listen, or what follows: “I would soon have put down their enemies, and laid my hand on those who trouble them.” So let no one try, by a false interpretation, to twist what we brought forward to prove that nothing can be done without the Lord, and take it in support of free will in such a way as to try to take away from man the grace of God and his daily care, on the strength of this text: “But my people did not hear my voice,” and again: “If my people had listened to me, and if Israel had walked in my ways,” and the rest. Rather, let him consider that just as the power of free will is shown by the disobedience of the people, so the daily care of God, who calls out to him and warns him, is shown as well. For where he says, “If my people had listened to me,” he clearly implies that he had spoken to them before. And the Lord used to do this not only through the written law but also through daily appeals, like this one given through Isaiah: “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” Both points, then, can be supported from this passage, where it says: “If my people had listened, and if Israel had walked in my ways, I would soon have put down their enemies, and laid my hand on those who trouble them.” For just as free will is shown by the disobedience of the people, so God’s government and his help are made clear by the beginning and the end of the verse, where he implies that he had spoken to them before, and that afterward he would put down their enemies if they would listen to him. For we have no wish to do away with man’s free will by what we have said. We wish only to establish that the help and grace of God are necessary to it every day and every hour. [a]

When he had instructed us with this discourse, Abbot Paphnutius dismissed us from his cell before midnight, more stricken with sorrow than cheered. The chief lesson he pressed on us in his discourse was this. We had imagined that by perfecting the first renunciation, which we were trying to do with all our strength, we could climb the heights of perfection. But we would discover that we had not yet even begun to dream of the heights to which a monk can rise. For after we had learned a few things about the second renunciation, we would find that we had never before heard so much as a word about the third stage, in which all perfection is contained, and which in many ways far surpasses these lower ones.