love. As I said above, such faith and confidence bring love and
hope with them. Nay, if we see it aright, love is the first, or
comes at the same instant with faith. For I could not trust God,
if I did not think that He wished to be favorable and to love me,
which leads me, in turn, to love Him and to trust Him heartily
and to look to Him for all good things.

X. Now you see for yourself that all those who do not at at all
times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life
and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His
favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this
Commandment, and practise real idolatry, even if they were to do
the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all
the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and
innocence of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not
present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham,
show and pretence, with nothing back of them; against which
Christ warns us, Matthew vii: "Beware of false prophets, which
come to you in sheep's clothing." Such are all who wish with
their many good works, as they say, to make God favorable to
themselves, and to buy God's grace from Him, as if He were a
huckster or a day-laborer, unwilling to give His grace and favor
for nothing. These are the most perverse people on earth, who
will hardly or never be converted to the right way. Such too are
all who in adversity run hither and thither, and look for counsel
and help everywhere except from God, from Whom they are most
urgently commanded to seek it; whom the Prophet Isaiah reproves
thus, Isaiah ix: "The mad people turneth not to Him that smiteth
them"; that is, God smote them and sent them sufferings and all
kinds of adversity, that they should run to Him and trust Him.