On the Unchangeableness of God (67-69)

Therefore the lawgiver, being a most admirable physician of the passions and diseases of the soul, has proposed to himself one task and one end, namely, to eradicate the diseases of the mind by the roots, so that there may not be a single one left behind to put forth any shoot of incurable distemper.

In this way, then, he hoped to be able to eradicate it, if he were to represent the Cause of all things as indulging in threats and indignation, and implacable anger, and, moreover, as employing defensive arms to ward off attacks, and to chastise the wicked; for the fool alone is corrected by such means:

and therefore it is that it appears to me that with these two principal assertions above mentioned, namely, that God is as a man and that God is not as a man, are connected two other principles consequent upon and connected with them, namely, that of fear and that of love; for I see that all the exhortations of the laws to piety, are referred either to the love or to the fear of the living God. To those, therefore, who do not