thy hand to which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him.” You must either keep the commandments of God, and then heaven is your own: “If thou wilt keep the commandments,…they shall preserve thee;”[1] or else if you are not pleased to do that, hell is the place appointed for you. The reprobate man, before things came to such a pass with him, knew all this very well; why then did he choose hell? Who forced him to commit sin? No one but himself. So that he did not wish to be better off. And even if there is such a great difference between a momentary pleasure and eternal sorrow, is it not in your power and mine, O sinner! to enjoy the pleasure, or to reject it? Therefore you are indeed foolish and mad to purchase it at such a dear price; but God is and remains just in demanding the payment agreed on for it, and in chastising you with the rod that you knew well He had in readiness for your crime.
Nay, he even compels the just God to punish him, though such is not God’s will. Moreover the sinner forces the God of justice, and so to say compels Him by violence to condemn him to hell. How so? God seeks and desires nothing more than that man by keeping the commandments should escape hell and be eternally happy in heaven; to that end He gives us so many warnings to be on our guard against the fire of hell, and He threatens us with that terrible punishment that fear may urge us to work out our salvation, as we shall see more in detail in the next part. And how long does He not wait for the sinner who is actually in mortal sin, although He has then the undoubted right of sending him at once into hell? How often does He not, as it were, beg and pray, and urge him to come back, promising to receive him again as His dear child, and assuring him that the angels will rejoice at his conversion? Is not that a clear proof that the good God does not wish the sinner to be lost? Now, if in 6pite of all this the sinner obstinately persists in wickedness, and continues to be the enemy of God; if he says, by his actions: I do not wish to be free from sin; I know that eternal fire is my doom; let it be so; let me go to hell; it is nothing to me: I will not be converted; then is the Lord God, on account of His infinite holiness and justice, which do not allow Him to leave wickedness unpunished, compelled, as it were, to do what He is unwilling to do, and to condemn to hell that man whom He would will-
- ↑ Apposuit tibi aquam et ignem; ad quod volueris porrige manun tuam. Ante hominem vita et mors, bonum et malum; quod placuerit ei dabitur illi. Si volueris mandate servare, conservabunt te.—Ecclus. xv. 17, 18, 16.
