Chapter IV.
How evil cannot be forced on any one by another against
his will.
Preserving
then these
distinctions clear and fixed, and knowing that there is nothing good
except virtue alone, and nothing bad except sin alone and separation
from God, let us now carefully consider whether God ever allows evil to
be forced on his saints either by Himself or by some one else. And you
will certainly find that this never happens. For another can never
possibly force the evil of sin upon anyone, who does not consent and
who resists, but only on one who admits it into himself through sloth
and the corrupt desire of his heart. Finally, when the devil having
exhausted all his wicked devices had tried to force upon the blessed
Job this evil of sin, and had not only stripped him of all his worldly
goods, but also after that terrible and
utterly unlooked for calamity of bereavement
through the death of his seven children, had heaped upon him dreadful
wounds and intolerable tortures from the crown of his head to the sole
of his foot, he tried in vain to fasten on him the stain of sin,
because he remained steadfast through it all, never brought himself to
consent to blasphemy.