On Prayer 10.1

These things have been said as a hypothesis: even if nothing else follows for us when we pray, we gain the best things by having understood how we ought to pray and doing it. And it is clear that one who prays in this way will hear, while he is still speaking, as he looks upon the power of the one who hears him, the words “Behold, I am here,” having cast off, before praying, all discontent with providence. For this is what is shown by the words, “If you take away from yourself the bond, and the stretching out of the hand, and the word of murmuring”: this is the one who is content with what happens, who has become free from every bond, and does not raise his hand in vote against God, who ordains what he wills for our training, nor murmurs in the secret of his thoughts without a voice audible to men. Such murmuring, like that of wicked servants who do not openly find fault with their masters' orders, is practiced by those who do not dare with their voice and whole soul to speak ill of providence for what happens, but wish as it were to escape the notice even of the Lord of all in what displeases them. And I think this is also the meaning of what is in Job: “In all these things that happened Job did not sin with his lips before God,” while of the temptation before it, it is written: “In all these things that happened Job did not sin before God.” And forbidding that this should happen, the word says in Deuteronomy: “Take heed lest there be a hidden word in your heart, an iniquity, saying, The seventh year draws near,” and so on.