torment my soul with the expectation of hell, and, if there be a hell, I will persuade it that there is none; meanwhile I will live here in luxury! Why dost thou add sin to sin? If when thou hast sinned thou believest that there is a hell, thou wilt depart with the penalty of thy sins only to pay; but if thou add this further impiety, thou wilt also for thine impiety, and for this thy thought, suffer the uttermost punishment; and what was a cold and shortlived comfort to thee, will be a ground for thy being punished for ever. Thou hast sinned: be it so: why dost thou encourage others also to sin, by saying that there is no hell? Why didst thou mislead the simpler sort? Why unnerve the hands of the people? So far as thou art concerned, everything is turned upside down; neither will the good become better, but listless; nor the wicked desist from their wickedness. For, if we corrupt others, do we get allowance for our sins? Seest thou not the devil, how he attempted to bring down Adam? And has there then been allowance for him? Nay, surely it will be the occasion of a greater punishment, that he may be punished not for his own sins only, but also for those of others. Let us not then suppose that to bring down others into the same destruction with ourselves will make the Judgment-seat more lenient to us. Surely this will make it more severe. Why thrust we ourselves on destruction? The whole of this cometh of Satan. O man, hast thou sinned? Thou hast for thy Master One that loveth man. Entreat, im- plore, weep, groan; and terrify others, and pray them that they fall not into the same. If in a house some servant, of those that had offended their master, says to his son, “My child, I have offended the master, do thou be careful to please him, that thou be not as I”: tell me, 269 will he not have some forgiveness? will he not bend and soften his master? But if, leaving so to speak, he shall say such words as these, that he727 will not requite every one according to his deserts; that all things are jumbled together indiscriminately, both good and bad; that there is no thanks in this house; what thinkest thou will be the master’s mind concerning him? will he not suffer a severer punishment for his own misdoings? Justly so; for in the former case his feeling will plead for him, though it be but weakly; but in this, nobody. If no other then, yet imitate at least that rich man in hell,728 who said, “Father Abraham, send to my kinsmen, lest they come into this place,” since he could not go himself, so that they might not fall into the same condemnation. Let us have done with such Satanical words. What then, saith he, when the Greeks put questions to us; wouldest thou not that we should try to cure729 them? But by casting the Christian into perplexity, under pretense of curing the Greek, thou aimest at establishing thy Satanical doctrine. For since, when com- muning with thy soul alone of these things, thou persuadest her not; thou desirest to bring 727 The master. 728 γεέννῃ. 729 θεραπεύειν. As we say, familiarly, “doctor them.” The term was commonly used. Theodoret has a treatise called, “The Remedy of Greekish affections.” Here it is “humor them” by palatable doctrine. 473 Colossians 1:9,10