that Will, they never desire what they cannot obtain,"[288] and
hence never ask for it. Whence it is clear that their prayers
are always heard.

4. Whoever obtains something by prayer in a certain sense merits it. But
the Saints who are in our Fatherland are no longer capable of meriting.
Therefore they cannot obtain anything for us from God by their prayers.

But although the Saints when once they are in our Fatherland are
not capable of meriting for themselves, they are still capable
of meriting for others, or rather of helping others by reason of
their own previous merits. For when alive they merited from God
that their prayers should be heard after death. Or we might say
that in prayer merit and the power to obtain what we ask do not
rest on the same basis. For merit consists in a certain
correspondence between an act and the end towards which it is
directed and which is given to it as its reward; but the
impetratory power of prayer rests upon the generosity of him
from whom we ask something. Consequently prayer sometimes wins
from the generosity of him to whom it is made what perhaps was
not merited either by him who asked nor by him for whom he
asked. And thus, though the Saints are no longer capable of
meriting, it does not follow that they are incapable of winning
things from God.

5. Again, the Saints conform their will in all things to the Divine
Will. Therefore they can only will what they know God wills. But no one
prays save for what he wishes. Consequently they only pray for what they
know God wills. But what God wills would take place whether they prayed
or not. Consequently their prayers have no power to obtain things.

But, as is evident from the passage of S. Gregory quoted above
in reply to the third difficulty, neither the Saints nor the
Angels will anything save what they see in the Divine Will. And
consequently they ask for nothing else save this. But it does
not follow that their prayers are without fruit, for, as S.
Augustine says in his treatise, _On the Predestination of the
Saints_,[289] and S. Gregory in his _Dialogues_,[290] the
prayers of the Saints avail for the predestinate, because
perhaps it was pre-ordained that they should be saved by the
prayers of those who interceded for them. And so, too, God wills
that by the prayers of the Saints should be fulfilled what