“Tell this unknowing man to stop claiming that I have not punished him for his sins. It’s indeed the opposite! I have grabbed him and held him in my hands many times, but he was completely incognizant of it. Tell him that he’s become so tainted inside and out, like a blackened pot, that darkness no longer has any effect on him. Patches of dirt are immediately apparent on a clean surface; it’s the same with sin and the marks it leaves on the soul. Darkness first strikes at the inside and then reveals itself slowly on the outside. “When someone’s whole being has been tainted through and through,
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