Enough, methinks, of words, though, impelled by love to man, I might have gone on to pour out what I had from God, that I might exhort to what is the greatest of blessings--salvation. For discourses concerning the life which has no end, are not readily brought to the end of their disclosures. To you still remains this conclusion, to choose which will profit you most--judgment or grace. For I do not think there is even room for doubt which of these is the better; nor is it allowable to compare life with destruction. THE INSTRUCTOR. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. THE OFFICE OF THE INSTRUCTOR. As there are these three things in the case of man, habits, actions, and passions; habits are the department appropriated by _hortatory_ discourse the guide to piety, which, like the ship’s keel, is laid beneath for the building up of faith; in which, rejoicing exceedingly, and abjuring our old opinions, through salvation we renew our youth, singing with the hymning prophecy, “How good is God to Israel, to such as are upright in heart!”[159] All actions, again, are the province of _preceptive_ discourse; while _persuasive_ discourse applies itself to heal the passions. It is, however, one and the self-same word which rescues man from the custom of this world in which he has been reared, and trains him up in the one salvation of faith in God. When, then, the heavenly guide, the Word, was inviting men to salvation, the appellation of _hortatory_ was properly applied to Him: this same word was called rousing (the whole from a part). For the whole of piety is hortatory, engendering in the kindred faculty of reason a yearning after true life now and to come. But now, being at once curative and preceptive, following in His own steps, He makes what had been prescribed the subject of persuasion, promising the cure of the passions within us. Let us then designate this Word appropriately by the one name _Tutor_ (or _Pædagogue_, or _Instructor_).