Letters

⁷ Listen, only listen, to the blasphemer. “Suppose,” he avers, “that I want to bend my finger or to move my hand, to sit, to stand, to walk, to run to and fro, to spit or to blow my nose, to perform the offices of nature; must the help of God be always indispensable to me?” Thankless, nay blasphemous wretch, hear the apostle's declaration: “whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Hear also the words of James: “go to now, you that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: for what is your life? It is even a vapour that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. For that you ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings; all such rejoicing is evil.” You fancy that a wrong is inflicted on you and your freedom of choice is destroyed if you are forced to fall back on God as the moving cause of all your actions, if you are made dependent on His Will, and if you have to echo the psalmist's words: “my eyes are ever toward the Lord: for it is he that shall pluck my feet out of the net.” And so you presume rashly to maintain that each individual is governed by his own choice. But if he is governed by his own choice, what becomes of God's help? If he does not need Christ to rule him, why does Jeremiah write: “the way of man is not in himself” and “the Lord directs his steps.”

You say that the commandments of God are easy, and yet you cannot produce any one who has fulfilled them all. Answer me this: are they easy or are they difficult? If they are easy, then produce some one who has fulfilled them all. Explain also the words of the psalmist: “you cause toil by your law,” and “because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways.” And make plain our Lord's sayings in the gospel: “enter ye in at the strait gate;” and “love your enemies;” and “pray for them which persecute you.” If on the other hand the commandments are difficult and if no man has kept them all, how have you presumed to say that they are easy? Do not you see that you contradict yourself? For either they are easy and countless numbers have kept them; or they are difficult and you have been too hasty in calling them easy.