11. Cf. Letter CLIV.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 271 among good people,' ^^ may it help me with you in your own behalf, that I may enjoy you in Him who has opened for me this door to you, and has given me confidence, especially as what I ask I now think is easy for your mind to accept, supported and strengthened as it is by so many divine helps.
If you recognize that you have received the virtues which you have, and if you return thanks to Him from whom you have received them, directing them to His service even in your secular ofl&ce; if you rouse the men subject to your authority and lead them to worship God, both by the example of your own devout life and by your zeal for their welfare, whether you rule them by love or by fear if, in working for their greater security, you have no other aim than that they should thus attain to Him who will be their happiness—then yours will be true virtues, then they will be increased by the help of Him whose bounty lavished them on you, and they will be so perfected as to lead you without fail to that truly happy life which is no other than eternal life. In that Ufe, evil will no longer have to be distinguished from good by the virtue of prudence, because there wiU be no evil there; adversity will not have to be home with fortitude, because there will be nothing there but what we love; temperance will not be needed to curb our passions, because there will be no enticements to passion there; nor shall we have to practise justice by helping the poor out of our abundance, for there we shall find no poor and no needy. There will be but one virtue there, and it will be the same as the reward of virtue, which the speaker in the sacred writings mentions as the
11. Cf. Letter CLIV.