Provérbios 16
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Provérbios 16:1
Assuredly, as to what is written, "The preparation of the heart is man's part, and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord," they are misled by an imperfect understanding, so as to think that to prepare the heart—that is, to begin good—pertains to people without the aid of God's grace. Be it far from the children of promise thus to understand it! — AGAINST TWO LETTERS OF THE PELAGIANS 2:19
Provérbios 16:32
The Scriptures offer the example of a woman of astounding fortitude and oblige me now to speak of her. This woman chose to give over to the tyrant and executioner every one of her seven sons rather than to utter a single word of sacrilege. And after fortifying them with her exhortations, at the same time suffering cruelly in their tortures, she herself had to undergo what she had called upon them to endure. Could any patience be greater than this?Yet what marvel is it that the love of God pervading her inmost soul should have withstood the tyrant and the executioner, and bodily pain, and the weakness of her sex, and her own human emotions? Had she not heard the words: "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints"? Had she not heard, "The one who is patient is better than the one who is the mightiest"?… She most assuredly knew these and many other divine precepts on fortitude written in the books of the Old Testament (which were the only ones then in existence) by the same Holy Spirit who wrote those in the New Testament. — THE CATHOLIC AND MANICHAEAN WAYS OF LIFE 1:23.43