These voluntarily blind men should know that God, who never deceives, allows these seducers to be in order to punish the corrupt hearts of those who seek to be seduced, that blindness is a punishment for sin although it is often a cause of it, and that he who has refused to listen to eternal Wisdom (which speaks to him only for his own good) justly ends by being corrupted by men whose deceit is as dangerous as their flattery is pleasant.