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Introduction. The question of where our faith in God comes from 1. Since something unkind was announced to me about you, I began to pray to the Lord; and until anything good is announced, I will continue to pray that you will accept my message without contempt and read it for your salvation. If He hears this prayer of mine for you, He will also grant that I bring thanksgiving for you. If I ask [the Lord] for this, then, without a doubt, you will not resist this beginning of my letter. After all, I pray for you that you adhere to the right faith. So, if it doesn’t bother you that we pray for those who are dear to us; if you admit that such prayer is Christian; if you yourself either remember how you also prayed for those who are dear to you, or agree that you should have prayed for them, then how can you say what I heard you say: “That we believe correctly in God and agree with the Gospel is not a gift from God, but we have it from ourselves, that is, from our own will, which He does not work for us in our hearts.” And when you hear: “What then does it mean that the apostle said: God works in you both desire and accomplishment?” - you answer this: “With the help of His law, with the help of His Scripture, which we read or hear, God does what we want, but agreeing or disagreeing with this is so much in our power that if we want it, it is done, but if we do not want it, then we make God’s action have no power in us. After all, He acts as much,” you say, “as far as it is in His power that we will, when His sayings become known to us, but if we do not want to agree with them, we ourselves do so that His action does not bring us any benefit.” If you say this, you are certainly contradicting our prayers. 2. Say then quite openly that we do not need to pray for those to whom we preach the Gospel so that they believe, but only need to preach to them. Direct your reasoning against the prayers of the Church, and when you hear how the priest of God at the altar encourages the people of God to pray for the unbelievers, so that God will convert them to the faith, and for the catechumens, so that He will breathe into them the desire for rebirth, and for the faithful, so that by His gift they will remain in what they began to be - mock the pious voices and say that you are not doing what they are calling for, then do not pray to God for unbelievers, so that He would make them believers, because this is not at all a benefit of Divine mercy, but a duty of the human will. And, being a man instructed in the Church of Carthage, condemn also the book of the most blessed Cyprian On the Lord's Prayer. After all, when this teacher explained this prayer, he showed that one must ask God the Father for what, as you say, a person gets from a person, that is, from oneself. By the gift of God a person has a desire to believe 3. If what I said about the prayers of the Church and about the martyr Cyprian is not enough for you. then listen to more and condemn the apostle, who said: We pray to God that you do no evil 1 . After all, you cannot say that he who does not believe in Christ, or who abandons the faith of Christ, does no evil; and therefore the one who says: so that you do no evil, among other things, does not want this to happen; and it is not enough for him to command such a thing, but he admits that he prays to God that this does not happen, knowing that the human will is corrected and directed by Him so as not to do such a thing. For man’s steps are directed by the Lord, and he will desire His way 2 . [The prophet] did not say: “And he will learn His way”, or: “He will hold on”, or: “He will walk”, or something similar, about which you could say that although it is given from God, it is already given to a willing person. And then it would turn out that the good deed of God, with which He directs the feet of man, so that he learns His path, adheres to it and walks along it, man himself precedes the action of his will and is awarded the gift of God thanks to his previous will. But for this reason [the prophet] said: Man’s feet are directed from the Lord, and he will want His way, so that we understand that the very good will, thanks to which we begin to desire to believe (after all, what is the path of God, if not right faith?), is a gift from the One who first directs our steps so that we want. After all, Scripture does not say: “Man’s steps are directed by the Lord, because he desired His way”; but he says: They are heading, and he will want to. So, they are not directed because he wanted, but because they are directed, he will want. CPL 262 Translation based on the edition: Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina. Accurante J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1845. T. 33. Col. 978–989. Places with discrepancies were verified with the publication: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vindobonae, 1911.Vol. 57. R. 403–425 Ps 36 (according to LXX). In the Synod, trans.: The feet of such a person are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. You might be interested in: