Глава XXI

God works in the hearts of people, bending their will wherever He pleases 42. Who will not fear those Divine judgments, according to which God, in the hearts of even evil people, produces what He pleases, while rewarding them according to their deserts? Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, rejected the helpful advice the elders gave him, [admonishing him] not to act harshly with the people, and chose to follow the words of his peers, answering menacingly to those to whom he should have answered with meekness 237 . Why did this happen, wasn’t it of his own free will? But at that time the ten tribes of Israel departed from him and appointed themselves another king, Jeroboam, [and this happened] so that the will of the angry God would be accomplished, for He predicted that this would happen. After all, this is what the Scripture says: And the king did not listen to the people, for so it was destined by the Lord, that His word might be fulfilled, which the Lord spoke through Ahijah the Shilohite to Jerova the son of Nebat 238 . Wasn’t all this done through human will, but in such a way that what was destined by the Lord was fulfilled? Read the books of Chronicles, and you will find that in the second book it is written like this: And God stirred up the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabians, neighboring the Ethiopians, against Joram, and they went against Judah, and destroyed it, and seized all the property that was in the king's house 239. It is clearly shown here that God stirs up enemies to devastate those lands that He deems worthy of such punishment. However, did not the Philistines and Arabians come of their own free will to destroy Judah, or did they come of their own free will in the sense that it is falsely written about how the Lord aroused them to this action? On the contrary, both are true, since they also came of their own free will, and the Lord aroused their spirit [to this]. One can say the other way around: the Lord aroused their spirit, and at the same time they came of their own free will. After all, the Almighty [God] also produces in the hearts of people the movement of their wills, in order to accomplish through [these people] what He wants to accomplish through them, Who is in no way capable of wishing anything unjustly. And what do the words that the man of God said to King Amaziah mean: Let not the army of Israel go with you, because the Lord is not with Israel, with all the sons of Ephraim, for if you decide to rely on them, then God will put you to flight in the face of your enemies, since God has the power to support or put to flight 240? Why and how does the power of God support some in battle, giving them courage, and put others to flight, instilling fear in them? Is it not because the One who created in heaven and on earth everything he wanted 241 also acts in the hearts of people? We can read what King Joash of Israel said when he sent a messenger to King Amaziah, who wanted to fight with him. Here he, by the way, says: Now sit at home. Why do you incite evil, since you will fall, and Judas with you? 242 Further the Scripture adds: But Amaziah did not listen, since this was from God, in order to deliver them into the hand of [Joash] because they began to resort to the gods of Edomite 243. Behold, God, wanting to avenge the sin of idolatry, performed such an action in the heart of the one with whom he was quite rightly angry that the latter, not listening to the saving admonition, but despising it, went to war, where he fell along with his army. And through the prophet Ezekiel, God says this: And the prophet, if he is deceived and begins to say, “I, the Lord, have deceived this prophet, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel 244.” In the book of Esther (and this was a woman from the people of Israel in the land of captivity, who became the wife of a foreign Persian king 245) it is written that when it became necessary for her to stand up for her people, whom the king ordered to be massacred throughout his kingdom, she turned to the Lord with a prayer, for this great need prompted her, so that, contrary to the royal order and contrary to her position, she dared to enter the king. And look what the Scripture says: He looked at her like a bull, in the rage of his indignation, and the queen was afraid, and her color changed from weakness, and she bowed down on the head of her friend walking in front of her. And God turned and changed the king’s indignation into meekness 246. And in the Proverbs of Solomon it is written: As the rush of water, so is the heart of a king in the hand of God; wherever he wants, he will incline him 247. And in Psalm one hundred and four we read about what the Lord did to the Egyptians: He turned their hearts so that they would hate His people, so that they would deceive His servants 248 . Look also at what is written in the Epistles of the Apostles; in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans: Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts, into uncleanness. It is also written below: Therefore God gave them over to shameful passions. And a little lower: Since they did not take care to have God in their minds, God gave them over to a depraved mind - to do indecent things 249. And in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians the apostle says about some: Because they did not accept the love of the truth for their salvation, God will send them strong delusion, so that they will believe a lie, so that all who did not believe the truth, but loved unrighteousness, will be condemned 250 . 43. From these and similar evidence of Divine sayings, and it would be too long to remember them all, I believe it becomes quite clear that God acts in the hearts of people, inclining their wills wherever He pleases, either to good according to His mercy, or to evil according to their merits, and He is guided in this by His judgment, sometimes open and sometimes hidden, but always just. For in your heart the thought must be firmly established that there is no unrighteousness with God 251. And therefore, when you read in the Scriptures of Truth that people are deceived by God, or their hearts are darkened and hardened by Him, you should not doubt that their evil merits preceded this, so that they justly suffered all this. Otherwise it will happen to you, as in this parable of Solomon: The foolishness of a man defiles his ways, and he accuses God in his heart 252. But grace is not given according to people’s merits, otherwise grace is no longer grace, because that is why it is called grace because it is given freely. So, if [God] can either through angels (good or evil), or in some other way, act even in the hearts of evil people, whose malice He did not create, but which was either inherited in accordance with their descent from Adam, or increased through the participation of their own will; If He can act in them in accordance with their merits, then what is surprising when He who made the very hearts [of men] become good from evil, works through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of His chosen [all] good? De gratia et libero arbitrio (CPL 352). Translation based on the publication: Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina. Accurante J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1845. T. 44, Col. 881–912. This refers to the Persian king Artaxerxes, whose wife Esther became. See: Esther 2:16.