ACCORDING to the admonition of Scripture, think of the Lord in goodness (Wisdom i. 1); thou must not suspect Him to be cruel or inexorable; but believe Him to be pious, clement, sweet, and liberal towards those who are of good will and who repent with all their hearts. For He knows what He hath fashioned, He contemplates His own image, He considers our frailty, our wanderings, our blindness. When He is said to be terrible, or to rebuke the wicker! in His wrath, it is said not as if He were terrible in Himself, but only towards those who, having cast away holy shame, persist in the defilements of their sins: He repels and punishes their sins, as most foreign to His sweetness and purity, remaining all the while sweet and tranquil in Himself. Aeterna Press