may take it to heart and retain it:

[Exposition of the Appendix to the First Commandment.]


For I am the Lord, thy God, strong and jealous, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that
love Me and keep My commandments.

Although these words relate to all the commandments (as we shall
hereafter learn), yet they are joined to this chief commandment
because it is of first importance that men have a right head; for
where the head is right, the whole life must be right, and vice versa.
Learn, therefore, from these words how angry God is with those who
trust in anything but Him, and again, how good and gracious He is to
those who trust and believe in Him alone with the whole heart; so that
His anger does not cease until the fourth generation, while, on the
other hand, His blessing and goodness extend to many thousands lest you
live in such security and commit yourself to chance, as men of brutal
heart, who think that it makes no great difference [how they live]. He
is a God who will not leave it unavenged if men turn from Him, and will
not cease to be angry until the fourth generation, even until they are
utterly exterminated. Therefore He is to be feared, and not to be
desisted.

He has also demonstrated this in all history, as the Scriptures
abundantly show and daily experience still teaches. For from the
beginning He has utterly extirpated all idolatry, and, on account of
it, both heathen and Jews; even as at the present day He overthrows all