Here we have again the Word of God whereby He would encourage and urge
us to true noble and sublime works, as gentleness patience, and, in
short, love and kindness to our enemies, and would ever remind us to
reflect upon the First Commandment, that He is our God, that is, that
He will help, assist, and protect us, in order that He may thus quench
the desire of revenge in us.

This we ought to practice and inculcate and we would have our hands
full doing good works. But this would not be preaching for monks; it
would greatly detract from the religious estate, and infringe upon the
sanctity of Carthusians, and would even be regarded as forbidding good
works and clearing the convents. For in this wise the ordinary state of
Christians would be considered just as worthy, and even worthier, and
everybody would see how they mock and delude the world with a false,
hypocritical show of holiness, because they have given this and other
commandments to the winds, and have esteemed them unnecessary, as
though they were not commandments but mere counsels, and have at the
same time shamelessly proclaimed and boasted their hypocritical estate
and works as the most perfect life, in order that they might lead a
pleasant, easy life, without the cross and without patience, for which
reason, too, they have resorted to the cloisters, so that they might
not be obliged to suffer any wrong from any one or to do him any good.
But know now that these are the true, holy, and godly works, in which,
with all the angels He rejoices, in comparison with which all human
holiness is but stench and filth, and besides, deserves nothing but
wrath and damnation.

The Sixth Commandment.