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GERMANUS: You have indeed spoken powerfully and grandly of the perfect
love of God. But still this fact disturbs us; viz., that while you were
exalting it with such praise, you said that the fear of God and the hope of
eternal reward were imperfect, though the prophet seems to have thought
quite differently about them, where he said: "Fear the Lord, all ye His
saints, for they that fear Him lack nothing." And again in the matter
of observing God's righteous acts he admits that he has done them from
consideration of the reward, saying: "I have inclined my heart to do thy
righteous acts forever, for the reward." And the Apostle says: "By
faith Moses when he was grown up, denied himself to be the son of Pharaoh's
daughter; choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to
have the pleasure of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ
greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians; for he looked unto the
reward." How then can we think that they are imperfect, if the blessed
David boasted that he did the righteous acts of God in hope of a
recompense, and the giver of the Law is said to have looked for a future
reward and so to have despised the adoption to royal dignity, and to have
preferred the most terrible affliction to the treasures of the Egyptians?
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