3. And they who understand outward blessings to be promised by the Divine word in Leviticus, will make use of the following: "If ye walk in my statutes, and |217 keep my commandments, and do them: then I will give you the rain in its season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the plains shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time, and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely," and so on. And from Deuteronomy they will take and use the passage, "And it shall be when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and ye observe to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God shall set thee on high above all: and all these blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, the herds of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy garners and thy kneading-troughs," and so on. And so again, on the contrary, it is said to the ungodly, "Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy garners and thy kneading-troughs. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, cursed the herds of thy cattle and the flocks of thy sheep." And countless other passages will be brought forward by those who will have it that good and evil things are bodily and external. And they lay hold of the Gospels also, and tell us that the Saviour when He came took away from men, inasmuch as He deemed them evil things, bodily blindness, and deafness, and palsy, and healed every disease and every sickness, and gave instead of the evil things which previously prevailed, clearness of bodily sight, and hearing, and every form of health and strength; and they will put you out of countenance by what they allege, unless we are prepared to admit possession by devils and lunacy |218 to be evil things, and, on the contrary, deliverance from them to be a good thing. Nay, the Apostles also in exercising the gifts of healing, and in working miracles, by the very nature of what they did brought good things to men and freed them from evil things. And they who say such things will pass over to the world to come, and allege that because pain is an evil thing sinners are committed to age-long fire; and if pain is an evil thing, pleasure must be a good one.