|
FROM which it plainly results that we ought not to hate or despise
those whom we see to be delivered up to various temptations or to those
spirits of evil, because we ought firmly to hold these two points: first,
that none of them can be tempted at all by them without God's permission,
and secondly that all things which are brought upon us by God, whether they
seem to us at the present time to be sad or joyful, are inflicted for our
advantage as by a most kind father and most compassionate physician, and
that therefore men are, as it were, given into the charge of schoolmasters,
and humbled in order that when they depart out of this world they may be
removed in a state of greater purity to the other life, or have a lighter
punishment inflicted on them, as they have been, as the Apostle says,
delivered over at the present time "to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."
|
|