his zeal about inferior matters destroys and loses both; whereas he who observes the right order, and preserves and cherishes the more commanding element, even if he neglects the secondary element yet preserves it by means of saving the primary one. Which also Christ signified to us when He said, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.”283 Well, do I convince you, that one ought never to despair of the disorders of the soul as incurable? or must I again set other arguments in motion? For even if thou shouldst despair of thyself ten thousand times, I will never despair of thee, and I will never myself be guilty of that for which I reproach others; and yet it is not the same thing for a man to renounce hope of himself, as for another to renounce hope of him. For he who has this suspicion concerning another may readily obtain pardon; but he who has it of himself will not. Why so pray? Because the one has no controlling power over the zeal and repentance of the other, but over his own zeal and repentance a man has sole authority. Nevertheless even so I will not despair of you; though you should any number of times be affected in this way; for it may be, that there will be some return to virtue, and to restoration to thy former manner of life. And now hear what follows: The Ninevites when they heard the prophet vehemently declaring, and plainly threatening; “yet three days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,”284 even then did not lose heart, but, although they had no confidence that they should be able to move the mind of God, or rather had reason to suspect the contrary from the divine message (for the utterance was not accompanied by any qualification, but was a simple de- claration), even then they manifested repentance saying: “Who knoweth whether God will repent and be entreated, and turn from the fierceness of His wrath, and that we perish not? 106 And God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He said He would do unto them and He did it not.”285 Now if barbarian, and unreasoning men could perceive so much, much more ought we to do this who have been trained in the divine doctrines and have seen such a crowd of examples of this kind both in history and actual experience. “For my counsels” we read “are not as your counsels nor my ways as your ways; but far as is the Heaven from the earth, so far are my thoughts from your mind, and my counsels from your counsels.”286 Now if we admit to our favour household slaves when they have often offended against us, on their promising to become better, and place them again in their former portion, and sometimes even grant them greater freedom of speech than before; much more does God act thus. For if God had made us in order to punish us, you might well have despaired, and questioned the possibility of your own salva- 283 Matt. x. 28. 284 Jonah iii. 4, LXX. 285 Jonah iii. 9, 10. 286 Isa. lv. 8, 9, varied a little from the LXX. 148 Letter I