Augustine (31)
God does not have mercy on someone because that person has willed and run, but he willed and ran because God has had mercy on him.Contra Julianum opus imperfectrum, bk1, c141.
Every good work in us is performed only by grace.Epist. 105 ad Bonifac.
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
In answering this question I have tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will. But the grace of God prevailed. Augustine: earlier writings, Volume 1953, Part 2 (Page 370)
But, during all those years, where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke and take your light burden on my shoulders, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honour though not in the eyes of men who see all honour in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. Confessions Book IX Chapter I
If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, why should we not believe that he proceeds from the Son? Indeed, if he did not proceed from the Son, Christ would not have breathed on his disciples after the resurrection and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." What else did such breathing mean than that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son?Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.6
yet they preach that our visible sun spreads its rays over all manner of offal, but keeps them clean and pure. Therefore, if pure things which are visible can be touched by visible things which are unclean and not share their pollution how much more did the unchangeable and invisible Truth, receiving a soul through the spirit and a body through the soul, take on the whole man without contamination to itself and free him from all infirmities?De agone christiano, c18 n20
sin is every word or deed or desire which happens against the law of GodContra Faustum bk22 c27
the sin of the first man harmed not only him, but the whole human race, because from it we received condemnation and fault together.Hypognosticon, bk2 c4 n4
some heretics, who are called Pelagians, said that the sin of the first transgression passed into other men not by propagation, but by imitationDe Peccatorum b1 c9 m9-10
Since God is an incorporeal and unchangeable living nature, remaining in eternal stability in his own self, he is entirely present in all things, and entirely in each of them. But those in whom he dwells receive him according to the diversity of their capacity, some more, some less, whom he builds into a temple most beloved to himself by the grace of his goodness.Epistola 187, c6 n19
How foolish are they who know not God! So many good things before their eyes, yet Him Who Is they fail to see.Confessions (Ch. Conversion)
He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.
This we now say, that, according to this condition of being born and dying, which we know, and in which we have been created, the marriage of male and female is some good; the compact whereof divine Scripture so commends, as that neither is it allowed one put away by her husband to marry, so long as her husband lives: nor is it allowed one put away by his wife to marry another, unless she who have separated from him be dead. Therefore, concerning the good of marriage, which the Lord also confirmed in the Gospel, not only in that He forbade to put away a wife, save because of fornication, but also in that He came by invitation to a marriagehttps://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm#:~:text=This%20we%20now%20say%2C%20that,long%20as%20her%20husband%20lives%3A
I have been concerned that such accounts should be published because I saw that signs of divine power like those of older days were frequently occuring in modern times too
That men sin, is attributable to themselves: that in sinning they produce this or that result, is owing to the mighty power of God, who divides the darkness as he pleasesDe praedest. sanct.
That the will is indeed free, but not freed--free of righteousness, but enslaved to sin.Contra Julianum
true religion looks upon those wars that are waged, not for motives of aggrandizement or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.
Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty.Confessions 4.10.15
[John 15:26] Jesus says this because it accords with his general practice of referring everything he has to the one from whom he has. Compare the place where he says, "My teaching is not mine but his that sent me." If the teaching that he says was his Father's and not his own was actually his as well, how much more does the Holy Spirit proceed from him, just as he proceeds from the Father. The one from whom the Son receives his Godhead is the one from whom he can claim that the Holy Spirit proceeds.Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.7
The will is that by which we both sin and live righteously. But unless the will itself is freed by God's grace from servitude, by which it is made a servant to sin, and is helped to overcome the vices, it is impossible for mortals to live righteously and piously.Retractationes, bk 1 c9 n4
it is called simple because it is what it possesses, except that each person is named relative to another, but is not the other. For it is true that the Father has a Son, in relation to whom he is named, yet he is not the Son; and the Son has a Father, yet he himself is not the Father. But in what is said in regard to himself, apart from his relation to the other, he is what he possesses. Thus, in having life, he is called alive with regard to himself, and he is the very life which is in him. It is for this reason that this nature is called simple, because there is no distinction between the one who possesses and the thing which is possessed, as is the case in all other things. For the liquid's container is not the liquid, and the body is not its colour, and the soul is not wisdomCity of God, Book 11
The Father generated that which he is; otherwise, if the Son is not that which the Father is, he is not a true Son.Contra Maximinum, bk1 c18
Thus the Holy Spirit has magnificently and wholesomely modulated the Holy Scriptures so that the more open places present themselves to hunger and the more obscure places may deter a disdainful attitude. Hardly anything may be found in these obscure places which is not found plainly said elsewhere.On Christian Doctrine, trans. by D. W. Robertson, Jr. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958) 38
Nor, by the way, can we say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son as well; it is not without point that the same Spirit is called the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.The Trinity (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 174
It is not advantageous to correct in secret an error which occurred publicly.
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.
Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
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