to Him; while virtues are foreign to us, and our sins are our own.

Let us change the rule which we have hitherto chosen for judging what is
good. We had our own will as our rule. Let us now take the will of God; all
that He wills is good and right to us, all that He does not will is bad.

All that God does not permit is forbidden. Sins are forbidden by the general
declaration that God has made, that He did not allow them. Other things
which He has left without general prohibition, and which for that reason are
said to be permitted, are nevertheless not always permitted. For when God
removed some one of them from us, and when, by the event, which is a
manifestation of the will of God, it appears that God does not will that we
should have a thing, that is then forbidden to us as sin; since the will of
God is that we should not have one more than another. There is this sole
difference between these two things, that it is certain that God will never
allow sin, while it is not certain that He will never allow the other. But
so long as God does not permit it, we ought to regard it as sin; so long as
the absence of God's will, which alone is all goodness and all justice,
renders it unjust and wrong.

669. To change the type, because of our weakness.

670. Types.--The Jews had grown old in these earthly thoughts, that God
loved their father Abraham, his flesh and what sprung from it; that on
account of this He had multiplie