ishment, and their respective merits, they will not seem of sufficient value to atone for all our sins, and to render us innocent in the sight of God. Because if we work only for ourselves, what recompense can we expect?
I have already said what this recompense is, and I will repeat it.
But if the merit of labor seems to you insufficient, you will be little disposed to accomplish it, even if an angel came down from heaven to explain it.
15. You see, then, how Adam atoned for the first sin. But it has been asserted that he was for that exiled to hell during five thousand five hundred years, and that he suffered there till Christ delivered him.
But this is certainly an interpretation contrary to the law. And why do you assert what is not conformable to law? Is it to be delivered from "these abominable occupations," and to live like a pomestchik? But if it is just to believe that Adam owes his deliverance to manual labor, then let us devote ourselves assiduously to that duty. Is it just?
16. I ask, then, why God did not prescribe to Adam as a penance our most esteemed virtues, such as fasting, prayer, partaking of the sacraments, etc. Why did he, instead, direct this labor in which men of education can find no virtue, but .who regard it as almost a vice? Why is this?
17. From the developments thus far reached,
