We acknowledge the justice of your punishment. We ask you to bring it to an end. Indeed, we have become few, we who at one time were compared with the grains of sand.^[1]

People who are ill-disposed usually close their eyes when they see someone who has injured them and look away when those who have offended them beg forgiveness. But these things are said in a human way, because the divinity is not composite but simple and infinite.^[1]

Those who carry a great weight bend over due to their weakness. And the soul that is tormented and greatly saddened by its sins also confesses to be bowed down and weak.

Their eyes are failing perhaps in a concrete sense, due to misfortune, or perhaps it refers to those whose minds are darkened and do not reason.

After death, their bones were to suffer as a sign of the future judgment.

And not only have we who are alive been given over to servitude, but also the tombs of our ancestors, in particular those of the kings, were destroyed to their foundations, and their bones were scattered and exposed to the open air to be corroded by the elements.

They also recall the threats written in the Law. In the canticle of Moses the different ways that evils would happen to them were described. The teeth of wild beasts I will send among them.^[1] By wild beasts he meant their enemies. Then he adds, I will deprive them of children by the foreign sword,^[2] and, I will scatter them.^[3] They recall these threats, but they also remember the promise of good things: You said that you would grant mercy to those who were repentant, freeing them from servitude and restoring their former freedom to them.

You might have known, by consulting with learned persons, that there are different meanings of the word spirit. The Scripture, in fact, also speaks of the spirit of man [a person], as David sings, I spoke with my heart by night, and my spirit was afflicted.^[1] And Baruch prays, saying, An anguished soul and a saddened spirit raises its cry to you. And in the canticle of the three young men, Spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord.^[2] For his part, the apostle writes, The Spirit attests to our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, we are also heirs.^[3] And, No one knows what is in a person except the spirit of the person that is within him.^[4] Moreover, in the letter to the Thessalonians he prays that your whole spirit, soul and body would be kept irreproachable at the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord.^[5] Winds are also called spirit, as for example in Genesis, And God made a spirit sweep over the earth, and the waters subsided.^[6] And in the book of Jonah, the Lord brought a great spirit over the sea and made a great tempest in the sea, so that the ship was in danger of breaking up.^[7] Also in Psalm 106 it is written, He spoke, and a hurricane spirit was stirred up over the waves.^[8] And in Psalm 148, Praise the Lord from the earth, fish of the sea and the abyss, fire, hail, snow, ice and tempest spirit, that carry out his word.^[9] And in Ezekiel, in the lamentation over Tyre, Your oarsmen brought you to the heart of the sea, into deep waters. The spirit of the east smashed you.^[10] If you were also to read the sacred Scriptures, you would find that the meaning itself of the divine words is also called spirit, as when Paul writes, He has made us fit to be ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit: the letter in fact kills, but the spirit gives life.^[11] Letter is that by which an expression is materially composed, but the spiritual meaning contained in it is called spirit.

If someone says the Father deserves a higher place and the only-begotten Son deserves to sit in a lower place, he will find himself imagining that all the resulting conditions of the body attach to this creature of his imagination. These are the deliriums of drunken delusion that stretch the limits of insanity. The Lord taught that he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father.^[1] Therefore, how can anyone consider himself a follower of true religion if he refuses to worship and glorify with the Father him who in nature, in glory and in dignity is joined with the Father? What can we say? What just defense will we have in the day of the awful universal judgment of all creation? The Lord has clearly announced that he will come in the glory of his Father.^[2] Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.^[3] Paul testified in the Spirit concerning Christ that he is at the right hand of God.^[4] The Father says, Sit at my right hand.^[5] The Holy Spirit attests that he has sat down at the right hand of the majesty of God.^[6] Shall we attempt to degrade him from his condition of equality to a lower state when he shares the honor and the throne with the Father? The fact that he sits as opposed to standing suggests, I believe, a nature that is fixed and absolutely stable, as Baruch also said when he wanted to exhibit God’s immutability and immobility: You sit forever while we are forever perishing.^[7] Moreover, the place at the right hand indicates, in my judgment, equality of honor.

I saw the Lord seated.^[1] To be seated on a throne is always a symbol of judgment, as David says: You are seated on a throne, you who administer justice.^[2] And Daniel, Three thrones were set up, and the tribunal sat down.^[3] By contrast, the prophet says that simply being seated is a symbol of something else. Of what? Stability, durability, proceeding onward, immutability, eternity, infinite life. Thus it is said, You who are seated forever, and we who perish forever. You, it is said, who endure: who are, who live and are always thus. The comparison makes it clear that he was not speaking of a seat but you who are seated forever, and we who perish. To sit on a throne is to judge.

The Word was God before all time, coeternal with the Father.^[1] But he wanted to become man for human beings. It was not through a change in the divine nature but by the miracle and will of God that he accepted birth as the beginning of his humanity. Thus, as a man he was born, but as God the Word, he preserved Mary’s virginity. Not even our own word corrupts the integrity of the mind in the moment it is conceived.^[2] It is the same with the Word of God. Being substantial and enhypostatic, when he chose to be born he nonetheless did not corrupt her virginity. What took place is beyond the logic of nature, and it consequently does not in any way descend to nature’s way of reasoning: I am talking about a miracle. This does not proceed according to reason: I am speaking of God who was born, who chose to be born and yet did not thereby start being God at that moment. Although being God, he was born. It was not the birth that made him God. He remained what he was and became what he was not. Because he wanted to become what he was not for the plan of salvation, he chose birth as the beginning of that plan. He became man without changing his nature and thereby upsetting the terms of the divine being. Sacred Scripture says, You are always the same, and your years have no end.^[3] And, You who reign forever, thus showing the immutability of the divine being. And he says further, I, God, am always the same, and do not change.^[4] He therefore became man without there being any change in the being of God or its being changed into another nature. What happened would not have been a miracle if he had manifested another nature through a change of nature. With us, many changes of this kind occur. But in this case God worked the miracle of becoming what he was not while remaining what he was. Referring to this event the great apostle said, He, being in the form of God.^[5] He says being, and not he was at one time, to show the perdurance of the nature. Being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal to God.^[6] He says to be equal to God, not as though he had been so only at one time. And he goes on to say, But he humbled himself, assuming the form of a servant.^[7] See how he remained what he was and at the same time humbled himself in the form of a servant? Though being God, he became a servant.

Those who have received condemnation for sin are dead. These words clearly indicate the immortal nature of the soul.