Therefore say you unto them, Thus says the LORD of hosts; Turn you unto me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, says the LORD of hosts.
All Commentaries on Zechariah 1:3 Go To Zechariah 1
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
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.”
