But with how much greater impudence still do our human reasoners make this their affirmation of there being still left something sound and whole, in the nature of the devil! For in the devil there is a greater enmity, hatred and rage against God than in man. But the devil was not created thus evil. He had a will conformed to the will of God. This will however he lost, and he lost also that most beautiful and most lucid intellect with which he was endowed, and he was converted into a horrible spirit, filled with rage against his Creator. Must not that have been then a most awful corruption, which transformed a friend of God into the most bitter and determined enemy of God? But here human reasoners bring forward that sentence of Aristotle, "Reason prays for the best." And they attempt to confirm it by passages from the Scriptures and by the opinions of philosophers, who hold that right reason is the cause of all virtues. Now I deny not that these sentiments are true, when they are applied to things subject to reason; such as the management of cattle, the building of a house, and the sowing of a field. But in the higher and divine things, they are not true. For how can that reason be said to be right, which hates God? How can that will be said to be good, which resists the will of God and refuses to obey God? When therefore men say with Aristotle, "Reason prays for the best," reply thou to them, Yes! Reason prays for the best, humanly; that is, in things in which reason has a judgment. In such things, reason dictates and leads to what is good and useful in a human, bodily or carnal sense. But since reason is filled with ignorance of God and aversion to the will of God, how can reason be called good in this sense? For it is a well known fact, that when the knowledge of God is preached with the intent that reason may be restored, then those who are the best men, if I may so speak, and men of the best kind of reason and will, are those who the most bitterly hate the gospel. In the sacred matter of divinity therefore let our sentiments be, that reason in all men stands as the greatest enemy against God; and also that the best will in men is most adverse to the will of God; seeing that from this very source arise hatred of the Word and persecution of all godly ministers. Wherefore, as I said, let us never extenuate, but rather magnify that mighty evil, which human nature has derived from the sin of our first parents; then will the effect be that we shall deplore this our fallen state and cry and sigh unto Christ our great Physician, who was sent unto us by the Father for the very end that those evils, which Satan has inflicted on us through sin, might by him be healed, and that we might be restored unto that eternal glory, which by sin we had lost.