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3. To make us deserve other virtues by work.

(But to keep His own pre-eminence, He grants prayer to whom He pleases.)

Objection: But we believe that we hold prayer of ourselves.

This is absurd; for since, though having faith, we cannot have virtues, how
should we have faith? Is there a greater distance between infidelity and
faith than between faith and virtue?

Merit. This word is ambiguous.

Meruit habere Redemptorem.78

Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.79

Digno tam sacra membra tangere.80

Non sum dignus.81

Qui manducat indignus.82

Dignus est accipere.83

Dignare me.84

God is only bound according to His promises. He has promised to grant
justice to prayers; He has never promised prayer only to the children of
promise.

Saint Augustine has distinctly said that strength would be taken away from
the righteous. But it is by chance that he said it; for it might have
happened that the occasion of saying it did not present itself. But his
principles make us see that, when the occasion for it presented itself, it
was impossible that he should not say it, or that he should say anything to
the contrary. It is then rather that he was forced to say it, when the
occasion presented itself, than that he said it, when the occasion presented
itself, the one being of necessity, the other of chance. But the two are all
that we can ask.

514. "Work out your own salvation with fear."

Proofs of prayer. Petenti dabitur.[85]

Therefore