[169] Little advantage, therefore, is there in a beginning to which a right ending has not set its seal. Quite frequently persons who had attained perfection have been accounted imperfect owing to their fancying that their improvement was due to their own zeal and not to the directing care of God. Owing to this fancy they were lifted up and greatly exalted, and so came to be borne down from lofty regions into the lowest abyss and so lost to sight: for we read,
[170] “If thou shalt build a new house, then shalt thou also make a parapet round thy roof, and so thou shalt not cause death in thy house, if the faller from it falls” (Deut. 22:8).
[171] For there is no fall so grievous as to slip and fall away from rendering honour to God, through ascribing the victory to oneself instead of to Him, and so being the perpetrator of the murder of one’s kin. For he that fails to honour That which IS slays his own soul, so that the edifice of instruction ceases to be of use to him. Instruction has obtained the nature that never grows old, and for this reason her house is called “new.” For whereas other things decay by lapse of time, she, however far she advances, retains the bloom of youth and is in her prime all along, radiant with unfailing loveliness, and renewing her freshness by her unceasing diligence.
[172] Moreover in his Exhortations the lawgiver charges those who have obtained large possession of good things not to inscribe themselves in their hearts as authors of their wealth, but “to remember God Who giveth strength to acquire power” (Deut. 8:18).
[173] This remembrance, then, was in his eyes the goal of prosperity, the putting forth of power the beginning: the consequence of this being that those who forget the end of their acquisitions cannot any longer derive real benefit from their beginning. The disasters which befall these men are self-chosen, the outcome of selfishness. They cannot bear to acknowledge as the Author of the good things which they enjoy the God Who brings to perfection the gifts which He loves to bestow.