The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK EIGHT 5I internally under God, who is the cause of all health by that double operation of His providence about which I have spoken above.®*
Man, therefore, must not turn to God in such a way that once being made just by Him he may depart, but rather that he may always be receiving justification from his Creator. When man does not depart from God, by this very fact, since God is present to him, he is justified, illuminated, and made happy, and God is cultivating and guarding him while he is obedient and subject to God's commands.
26. When man cultivates the earth so that the land is developed and made fertile, having done his work he departs, leaving the field ploughed or sown or irrigated or in whatever condition his work has placed it, and the work done remains when the worker is gone. But, as I have said, it is different when God cultivates a just man. He does not justify him in such a way that if the man should turn away, the work which God wrought would remain in him when he is gone.
A better example is that of air when light is present: the air has not been given its own luminosity, but it becomes luminous, for if it had been given its own luminosity and was not constantly receiving it, it would remain luminous when the light was gone. In a similar way, man is illuminated when God is present to him, but when God is absent, darkness is immediately upon him; and he is separated from God not by a distance in space but by a turning away of his will.
27. May God, then, who is immutably good, cultivate the good man and guard him. By Him we must be unceasingly made and unceasingly perfected, clinging to Him and remaining turned to Him of whom it is said, But it 1s good for me to adhere to God,®° and to whom it is said, / will keep my strength turned towards Thee.°®
For we are His work of art not only in so far as we are human beings but also in so far as we are good. When St. Paul spoke to the faithful, who had been converted from a life of sin, about the grace by which we have been saved, he said: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your doing, but tt 1s
God's gift; it is not because of your works, so that no one may glory.