Exhortation to the Greeks 11.115

“That all shall know God, from the least to the greatest; and I will be merciful to them,” says God, “and I will not remember their sins.” Let us receive the laws of life; let us obey God who exhorts us; let us learn of him, so that he may be merciful; let us pay him, though he needs nothing, a grateful reward, obedience, as a kind of rent to God for our dwelling here. “Gold for bronze, a hundred oxen's worth for nine”: for a little faith he gives you this great earth to cultivate, water to drink and other water to sail, air to breathe, fire to serve you, the world to live in; and he has permitted you to send a colony from here to heaven. All these great and many works and gifts he has hired out to you for a little faith. Then those who believe in sorcerers accept amulets and incantations as if they could save; and will you not bind on the heavenly one himself, the saving Word, and, trusting in God's incantation, be freed from the passions, which are diseases of the soul, and be torn away from sin? For sin is eternal death. Or else, completely toothless and blind like moles, you live in darkness doing nothing but eat, wasting away in corruption. But there is, there is a truth that cries out, “Light shall shine out of darkness.” Let the light shine, then, in the hidden part of the human being, in the heart, and let the rays of knowledge rise, bringing to light and making shine the hidden inner man, the disciple of the light, the friend and fellow heir of Christ; especially when the most honored and revered name of a good father comes to be known by a pious and good child, a father who gives gentle commands and enjoins what is saving on his child. Whoever obeys him gains in every way: he follows God, he obeys the Father, he knew him when he was astray, he loved God, he loved his neighbor, he fulfilled the commandment, he seeks the prize, he claims the promise.