It was once counted a glory for the altar that no axe had been lifted upon it, no stonecutter’s tool seen or heard. The higher meaning was that whatever was consecrated to God should be natural and free from artifice.

This [that is, the behavior of the Gnostics] is not the behavior of those who heal and give life but rather of those who aggravate disease and increase ignorance. The law shows itself much truer than such people when it says that whoever leads a blind man astray from the way is accursed. The apostles were sent to find those who were lost and to bring sight to those who did not see and healing to the sick. They did not speak to them in accordance with their previous opinions but by a revelati on of the truth. For no one would be acting rightly if one told the blind who were already beginning to fall over the precipice to continue in their dangerous way as if it were a sound one and as if they would come through all right.

Moses was the writer of a great part of the law. Did he not add to it a threat against the transgressor or the negligent? He presents a general malediction upon all violators. This is seen in his introduction to the announcement of this most frightful penalty: Cursed be every man that abides not in all that is written in the book of this law; and elsewhere, Cursed be he that does the work of the Lord negligently.^[1] If he is accursed who does the work of the Lord negligently, what does he deserve who does not follow the law at all?