Law in every particular so that you offend in none is difficult; (continued)
I RACTAI E 7 165 but he does not even allow you to obtain it because you dared to lie to truth. "*
12. What then are you going to do? Tell me. To fulfill the Law in every particular so that you offend in none is difficult; guilt, therefore, is certain. Don't you want to use the remedy? Look, my brothers, at the kind of remedy which the Lord has set up against the illnesses of the soul. What then? When you have a headache, we commend you if you put the gospel by your head and do not hurry to an amulet. For human frailty has come to this, and men who hurry to amulets must be so lamented that we rejoice when we see that a man, confined to his bed, is tossed by fever and pain and yet has placed no hope anywhere else except that he put the gospel by his head, not because the gospel was made for this but because it has been preferred to amulets. Therefore, if it is put by the head so that a headache may be eased, is it not put by the heart that the heart may be healed of its sins? Let it be done, then.
(2) Let what be done? Let it be put by the heart; let the heart be healed. It is a good thing, a good thing, that you do not fuss about the body's health, except that you ask for health from God. If he knows that it is for your advantage, he will give it; if he has not given it, it would not be advantageous for you to have it. How many lie sick in bed and are innocent; and yet, should they be healthy, they go out to commit crimes? For how many is health a disadvantage? The robber who goes to a narrow pass to kill a man, how much better would it be for him to be sick! He who rises up at night to dig through another man's wall, how much better would it be for him if he were tossed by fever! He would be ill with greater innocence; he is healthy and wicked.
(3) God, then, knows what is profitable for us; let us aim
40. Berrouard, Homelies I— XVI, 885—886, cites Sermon 1 14.5 (PL 38.654) as a parallel text which clarifies the obscurities of this sentence: "... from the emperor one may obtain a request based on a lie; when tlie lie is found out, the benefit will be lost and the liar punished. But from God, because he is both our advocate who gives the words of our request, and a witness of the truth or falsity of those words upon our lips, and our judge, we shall not even receive our request, much less lose the benefit of it."