THIS letter contains an interesting discussion of the question how an evil man like Balaam could be employed by God to utter true prophecies, and deals with other difficulties which arise out of Balaam’s history. AMBROSE TO CHROMATIUS. Sidenote: Heb. vi. 18. Sidenote: Rom. iii. 4. 1. DOES God lie? Truly He lies not, because it is impossible for God to lie. And further, does this impossibility arise from infirmity? No, truly, for how can He be Almighty if He cannot do all things? What then is impossible to Him? Not that which is difficult to His Power, but what is contrary to His Nature. _It is impossible_, it is said, _for Him to lie_. This impossibility comes not of infirmity, but of Power and Majesty, for truth admits not of falsehood, nor God’s Power of the weakness of error. Wherefore _let God be true and every man a liar_. 2. The truth therefore is always in Him; _He remains faithful_; change or _deny Himself He cannot_. But if He deny that He is true, He lies, but to lie belongs not to power but to weakness. Nor can He change, for His nature admits not infirmity. This impossibility therefore comes of His fulness, which cannot be diminished or increased, not of infirmity, which, in that it increases itself, is weak. Whence we gather that this impossibility on the part of God is indeed most powerful. For what can be more powerful than to be ignorant of all infirmity? Sidenote: 1 Cor. i. 25. 3. There is however another _weakness of God_ which _is stronger than men_, and a _foolishness of God_ which _is wiser than men_, but this has reference to the Cross, the former to His Godhead. If then His weakness is strength, how can that which comes of His power be weak? Let it therefore be an axiom with us that God lies not. Sidenote: Deut. xviii. 10. 4. But there was no diviner of auguries in Israel according to the law of God. How then was it that Balaam said that he was forbidden by the oracle of God to go and curse the people of Israel, and yet he went, and the Angel of the Lord who had forbidden his going, met him, and stood in the way of the ass that carried him, and nevertheless the Angel himself bid him go, only he must speak that which should be put into his mouth? If there was to be no deceiver in Israel, how did this oracle of God, declaring things for true, come to him who was a deceiver? If he spoke as the oracle of God, whence did he derive the grace of the Divine inspiration? Sidenote: S. John xi. 50.