who work iniquity;" [1] and, accordingly, we read in St. James, " Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God; for God is not a tempter of evils." [2] The man, who, although he does not tempt us, nor co-operate in tempting us, has it in his power to prevent us from being tempted, or from yielding to temptation, and does not, is also said to lead us into temptation. God suffers the good and the pious to be thus tempted; but he does not leave them unsupported by his grace. Sometimes, however, we fall, being left to ourselves by the just and rigorous judgments of God, in punishment of our crimes.
God is also said to lead us into temptation, when we abuse, to our own destruction, the blessings which he bestows on us as the means of promoting our eternal salvation, and, like the prodigal child, dissipate in voluptuousness our Father's substance, obedient to the impulse of our bad passions. [3] In such circumstances we may truly say what the Apostle says of the Law: " The commandment that was ordained to life, the same was found unto death to me." [4] Of this Jerusalem, as Ezekiel testifies, affords an apposite exemplification. Enriched and adorned by the Almighty with blessings of every sort, insomuch that God said, by the mouth of his Prophet, " Thou wast perfect through my beauty, which I had put upon thee;" [5] loaded with an accumulation of divine gifts, Jerusalem, far from evincing gratitude to God, from whom she had received, and was still receiving, so many favours; far from making use of those heavenly gifts for the end for which they were bestowed, the attainment of her own happiness, and laying aside all hope and every idea of deriving from them celestial fruit, ungrateful Jerusalem, sunk in luxury and abandonment, looked only to the enjoyment of her present superabundance. This is a subject on which Ezekiel dwells at considerable length, in the chapter to which we have already referred, and to which the pastor may recur. The inference, however, is obvious: it is, that those whom God permits to convert the abundant means, with which his Providence has blessed them, into instruments of vice, are equally guilty of ingratitude with the unhappy Jerusalem.
The Sacred Scriptures sometimes express the permission of God in language, which, if understood literally, would imply a positive act on the part of God; and this scriptural usage also demands attention. In Exodus it is said, " I will harden the heart of Pharaoh;" [6] and in Isaias, " Blind the heart of this people;" [7] and the Apostle, writing to the Romans, says, " God delivered them up to shameful affections, and to a reprobate sense:" [8] but these, and similar passages, we are not to understand as implying any positive act on the part of God; they express his permission only. [9]
- ↑ Ps. v. 5.
- ↑ James i. 13.
- ↑ Luke xv. 12.
- ↑ Rom. vii. 10.
- ↑ Ezek. xvi. 14.
- ↑ Ex. iv. et vii.
- ↑ Isa. vi. 10.
- ↑ Rom. i. 26.
- ↑ Vid. Iraen. lib. 4. contra hseret. cap. 48. Tertull. lib. 2. contra Marc. 14. Aug. lib. de praedest et gratia, c. 1. et de praed. sanct. cap. 9. et lib. de grat. et lib. arbit. cap, 2123. D. Thom 1. p. qusest. 87. art. 2 et 22. qurest. 15.
