Zacarias 1
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Zacarias 1:3
Free will and God's grace are simultaneously commended. When God says, "Turn to me, and I will turn to you," one of these clauses—that which invites our return to God—evidently belongs to our will; while the other, which promises his return to us, belongs to his grace. Here, possibly, the Pelagians think they have justification for their opinion, which they so prominently advance, that God's grace is given according to our merits. In the east, indeed, that is to say, in the province of Palestine, in which is the city of Jerusalem, Pelagius, when examined in person by the bishop, did not venture to affirm this. For it happened that among the objections which were brought up against him, this in particular was objected, that he maintained that the grace of God is given according to our merits, an opinion which was so diverse from Catholic doctrine and so hostile to the grace of Christ that unless he had anathemized it, as laid to his charge, he himself must have been anathemized on its account. He pronounced, indeed, the required anathema upon the dogm;a, but how insincerely his later books plainly show; for in them he maintains absolutely no other opinion than that the grace of God is given according to our merits. Such passages do they collect out of the Scriptures—like the one which I just now quoted, "Turn to me, and I will turn to you"—as if it were owing to the merits of our turning to God that his grace were given us, wherein he himself even turns to us. Now the persons who hold this opinion fail to observe that unless our turning to God were itself God's gift, it would not be said to him in prayer, "Turn us again, O God of hosts," and, "You, O God, will turn and quicken us," and again, "Turn us, O God of our salvation"—with other passages of similar import, too numerous to mention here. For with respect to our coming to Christ, what else does it mean than our being turned to him by believing? And yet he says, "No man can come to me, except it were given to him of my Father." — On Grace and Free Will 10
Zacarias 1:9
Likewise, who will tell with what bodies angels appear to people, in such fashion as not to be visible but to be tangible? And again how, not through tangible corporeality but by spiritual power, angels produce certain visions, not to the eyes of the body but to those of the spirit or the mind, or can utter speech, not of the ear from without, but within the soul of humans, being themselves placed there, as is written in the book of the prophets: "And the angel that spoke in me said to me" (for what the prophet says is not "that spoke to me," but "in me").… They appear also in sleep and speak through dreams (for we read in the Gospel: "Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying"). These methods of communication tend to show that the angels have intangible bodies, and make it a very difficult question how the patriarchs could wash the feet of angels, and how Jacob could wrestle with an angel in contact so unmistakable. Asking these questions and answering them with such guesses as we can is not a useless exercise for the mind, if the discussion is kept within bounds and if those who take part avoid the error of thinking they know what they do not know. For what need is there of affirming or denying or making nice distinctions about these and similar matters, when ignorance of them imputes no blame? — Enchiridion 15