α) In the light of the Augustinian dictum that “prayer is the surest proof of grace,”(315) it is safe to assume that St. Justin Martyr voiced our dogma when he put into the mouth of a venerable old man the words: “But thou pray above all that the gates of light may be opened unto thee; for no man is able to understand the words of the prophets [as _praeambula fidei_] unless God and His Christ have revealed their meaning.”(316) Augustine himself appeals to SS. Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory of Nazianzus, and then continues: “Such doctors, and so great as these, saying that there is nothing of which we may boast as of our own, which God has not given us; and that our very heart and our thoughts are not in our own power, ... attribute these things to the grace of God, acknowledge them as God’s gifts, testify that they come to us from Him and are not from ourselves.”(317) β) Like the Pelagians in their teaching on original sin,(318) the Semipelagians in their teaching on grace relied mainly on the authority of St. John Chrysostom, from whose writings they loved to quote such perplexing passages as this: “We must first select the good, and then God adds what is of His; He does not forestall our will because He does not wish to destroy our liberty. But once we have made our choice, He gives us much help. For while it rests with us to choose and to will antecedently, it lies with him to perfect and bring to an issue.”(319) To understand St. Chrysostom’s attitude, and that of the Oriental Fathers generally, we must remember that the Eastern Church considered it one of its chief duties to safeguard the dogma of free-will against the Manichaeans, who regarded man as an abject slave of Fate. In such an environment it was of supreme importance to champion the freedom of the will(320) and to insist on the maxim: “Help yourself and God will help you.” If the necessity of prevenient grace was not sufficiently emphasized, the circumstances of the time explain, and to some extent excuse, the mistake. St. Augustine himself remarks in his treatise on the Predestination of the Saints: “What need is there for us to look into the writings of those who, before this heresy sprang up, had no necessity of dwelling on a question so difficult of solution as this, which beyond a doubt they would do if they were compelled to answer such [errors as these]? Whence it came about that they touched upon what they thought of God’s grace briefly and cursorily in some passages of their writings.”(321) Palmieri remarks(322) that it would be easy to cite a number of similar passages from the writings of the early Latin Fathers before Pelagius, who certainly cannot be suspected of Semipelagian leanings.(323)