Re: MI5-Persecution: Why do you think MI5 are responsible? (2369)

Therefore it is in our power to ask. On the other hand, there is God. So it
is not in our power, since the obtaining of (the grace) to pray to Him is
not in our power. For since salvation is not in us, and the obtaining of
such grace is from Him, prayer is not in our power.

The righteous man should then hope no more in God, for he ought not to hope,
but to strive to obtain what he wants.

Let us conclude then that, since man is now unrighteous since the first sin,
and God is unwilling that he should thereby not be estranged from Him, it is
only by a first effect that he is not estranged.

Therefore, those who depart from God have not this first effect without
which they are not estranged from God, and those who do not depart from God
have this first effect. Therefore, those whom we have seen possessed for
some time of grace by this first effect, cease to pray, for want of this
first effect.

Then God abandons the first in this sense.

515. The elect will be ignorant of their virtues, and the outcast of the
greatness of their sins: "Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, thirsty"? etc.

516. Romans 3:27. Boasting is excluded. By