Psalms 59:10

For a person's good will comes before many other gifts from God, but not all of them. One of the gifts it does not antedate is—just itself! Thus in the sacred Writings we read "his mercy goes before me" and "his mercy shall follow me." It predisposes a person before he wills, to prompt his willing. It follows the act of willing, lest one's will be frustrated. Otherwise, why are we admonished to pray for our enemies, who are plainly not now willing to live piously, unless it is that God is even now at work in them and in their will? Or again, why are we admonished to ask in order to receive, unless it is that he who grants us what we will is he through whom it comes to pass that we will? We pray for enemies, therefore, that the mercy of God should go before them, as it goes before us; we pray for ourselves that his mercy shall follow us.

There is no need of such self-deception on the part of those who, through giving, however profusely, alms of their fruits or of money of whatever kind, believe that they are purchasing the right to persist with impunity in the enormity and wickedness of their misdeeds and vices. Not only do they perform such wickedness, but they so love it as to desire to persist in it forever, provided they can do so with impunity. "But one who loves iniquity hates his own soul"; and whoever hates his own soul does not show mercy but cruelty toward it. For in loving it according to the world, he hates it according to God. If, then, he wished to give to it those alms by which all things would be clean to him, he would hate his soul according to the world and love it according to God. Now no one gives alms at all unless he has the means of giving from One who has no need of it; and therefore it has been said, "His mercy shall go before me."

But far be it from us to say that those who "according to his purpose are called …, whom he foreknew" and "predestined to be conformable to the image of his Son" should be abandoned to their own desire, so that they perish. For this is suffered by the "vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction," and by their very perdition God makes known "the riches of his glory on the vessels of his mercy." It is for this reason that after saying, "My God, his mercy shall come before me," the psalmist at once adds, "God shall let me see over my enemies." Therefore it happens to them as is written, "Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart." But this does not happen to the predestined, whom the Spirit of God rules, for their cry is not in vain, "Give me not up, O Lord, from my desire, to the wicked," since it is also against these same desires that they have prayed, as is written, "Take away from me the greediness of the belly, and let not the lusts of the flesh take hold of me." God grants this favor to those over whom he rules but not to those who think they are fit to rule themselves and who, in the stiff-necked presumptuousness of their own will, disdain to have him as their guide.