[7] It is possible to take it in this way. In the bad man the true opinion concerning God is hidden in obscurity, for he is full of darkness with no divine radiance in him, whereby to investigate realities. Such an one is in banishment from the divine company, like the leper and the man with an issue. The former combines as joint causes God and creation, which are natures mutually hostile, for he shows two different colours, whereas there is one single Cause, even He who doeth all. The man with an issue, on the other hand, deriving everything from the world, and making it return into the world, imagines that nothing has been created by God, associating himself with the opinion of Heracleitus, in his advocacy of such tenets as “fullness and want,” “the universe one,” and “all things interchange.”
[8] So the divine word saith, “Let them send forth out of the holy soul every leper, and everyone that hath an issue, and everyone that is unclean in soul, both male and female (Numb. 5:2), and eunuchs with the generative organs of the soul cut away, and fornicators, deserters from the rule of One, to whom entrance into the assembly of God is absolutely forbidden (Deut. 23:2).
[9] But wise reasonings, so far from hiding themselves, are keenly desirous to be manifest. Do you not see that Abraham “was still standing before the Lord and drew nigh and said, ‘Destroy Thou not the just man together with the impious one’ ” (Gen. 18:22 f.), the one that is manifest and known to Thee together with him who shuns and avoids Thee? For this one is impious, but he that stands before Thee and avoids Thee not is just. For the only justice is that Thou, O Master, shouldst be honoured.
[10] A pious man is not found with the same ease as an impious one. We have to be content with a just man. This is why he says, “Destroy not a just together with an impious man.” For no one honours God as He deserves but only as is just. It is impossible to requite even our parents with boons equal to those which we have received from them—for it is out of the question to requite by becoming their parents. How must it not be impossible to recompense or to praise as He deserves Him who brought the universe out of non-existence? For it was an exercise towards us of every virtue.