As corrector of an inert People

That emulator [of David] Hezekiah arose;

He restored the Law to a sinful, forgetful people

All God’s mandates of old, he first

Commanded the people to observe,

Who ended war by his prayers,^[1]

Not by steel’s point: he, dying, had a grant

Of years and times of life made to his tears:

Deservedly such honor his career obtained. FIVE ^[1]

For who is drawn, if he was already willing? And yet no one comes unless he is willing. Therefore he is drawn in wondrous ways to will by the one who knows how to work within the very hearts of individuals. Not that people who are unwilling should believe—which cannot be—but that they should be made willing from being unwilling.

That this is true we do not surmise by human conjecture but discern by the most evident authority of the divine Scriptures. It is read in the books of the Chronicles, Also in Judah, the hand of God was made to give them one heart, to do the commandment of the king and of the princes in the word of the Lord. . . . Did the men of God who wrote these things—in fact, did the Spirit of God himself, under whose guidance such things were written by them—assail human free will? Away with the notion! But God has commended both the most righteous judgment and the most merciful aid of the Omnipotent in all cases. For it is enough for human beings to know that there is no unrighteousness with God. But how he dispenses those benefits, making some deservedly vessels of wrath, others graciously vessels of mercy—who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?^[1] If, then, we attain to the honor of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing to ourselves what we have received. For what do we have which we have not received??^[2]

In those days, we are told, Hezekiah was sick unto death, and he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord heard him and gave him a sign, that, namely of which we read in the fourth book of the kingdoms, which was given by Isaiah the prophet through the going back of the sun. But, it says, he did not respond to the benefits which he had received, for his heart was proud. And wrath was kindled against him and against Judah and Jerusalem. He humbled himself afterwards because his heart had been proud, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and therefore the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah. How dangerous, how terrible is the malady of vanity! So much goodness, so many virtues, faith and devotion, great enough to prevail to change nature itself and the laws of the whole world—all destroyed by a single act of pride! The result would have been that all his good deeds would have been forgotten as if they had never existed, and he would at once have been subject to the wrath of the Lord unless he had appeased him by recovering his humility. Thus, he who, at the suggestion of pride, had fallen from so great a height of excellence, could only mount again to the height he had lost by the same steps of humility.