not say that the blind are with the light, although the light surrounds their eyes,—there is
one resource remaining: that we should understand the adversary here as being the com-
mandment of God. For what is so much an adversary to those who wish to sin as the com-
mandment of God, i.e. His law and divine Scripture, which has been given us for this life,
that it may be with us in the way, which we must not contradict, lest it deliver us to the
judge, but which we ought to submit to quickly? For no one knows when he may depart out
of this life. Now, who is it that submits to divine Scripture, save he who reads or hears it
piously, deferring to it as of supreme authority; so that what he understands he does not
hate on this account, that he feels it to be opposed to his sins, but rather loves being reproved
by it, and rejoices that his maladies are not spared until they are healed; and so that even in
respect to what seems to him obscure or absurd, he does not therefore raise contentious
contradictions, but prays that he may understand, yet remembering that goodwill and rev-
erence are to be manifested towards so great an authority? But who does this, unless just
the man who has come, not harshly threatening, but in the meekness of piety, for the purpose
of opening and ascertaining the contents of his father’s will? “Blessed,” therefore, “are the
meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” Let us see what follows.
43
Chapter XI