Augustine of Hippo : There are some who bring false charges against God, or rather against the Scriptures of the Old Testament, because God said that he himself makes a man blind or mute. So what do they say about Christ the Lord, who says openly in the Gospel, "I have come so that those who are blind may see and those who see might be made blind"? Who besides a fool would believe that something can happen to a man in regard to corporeal defects that God did not will? No one doubts that God wills all things justly. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 8 Cyprian : Just as in Exodus God speaks to Moses, when he delays and fears to go to the people, saying, "Who gave a mouth to man and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Did not I the Lord God? Go now, and I shall open your mouth, and I will teach you what you shall speak." It is not difficult for God to open the mouth of a man devoted to him and to inspire constancy and confidence in speaking in one who confesses him, who in the book of Numbers made even a female ass speak against Balaam the prophet. Therefore let no one consider in persecutions what danger the devil brings, but rather let him bear in mind what assistance God affords. Let not the disturbances of men weaken the mind, but let divine protection strengthen the faith, since each one according to the Lord's promises and the merits of his faith receives so much of God's help as he thinks he receives, and since there is nothing which the Almighty cannot grant, except if the frail faith of the recipient be deficient. — Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom 10 Origen of Alexandria : Thus I understand also that which God says: "Who made the mute and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Was it not I, the Lord God?" There is an eye of the body, with which we behold these earthly things, an eye according to the sense of the flesh, of which the Scripture says: "walking vainly, puffed up by the sense of the flesh". To this we have another, contrary and better, that savors of divine things; and because it was blind in us, Jesus came to make it see, that those who did not see might see, and those who saw might be made blind. — HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF Luke 16