12- Wert Thou to counterbalance for the obedient servant...

12- Wert Thou to counterbalance for the obedient servant that which Thou Thyself hadst undertaken, he would be on the point of losing Thy reward and seeing the end of Thy favour, but through Thy generosity Thou hast repaid him for a short, perishing term with a long, everlasting term, and for a near, vanishing limit with an extended, abiding limit.

13- Then Thou dost not visit him with a settling of accounts for Thy provision through which he gained strength to obey Thee, nor dost Thou force him to make reckonings for the organs he employed to find the means to Thy forgiveness. Wert Thou to do that to him, it would take away everything for which he had laboured and all wherein he had exerted himself as repayment for the smallest of Thy benefits and kindnesses, and he would remain hostage before Thee for Thy other favours.

So how can he deserve something of Thy reward? Indeed, how? 14- This, my God, is the state of him who obeys Thee and the path of him who worships Thee. But as for him who disobeys Thy command and goes against Thy prohibition, Thou dost not hurry him to Thy vengeance, so that he may seek to replace his state in disobeying Thee with the state of turning back to obey Thee, though he deserved from the time he set out to disobey Thee every punishment which Thou hast prepared for all Thy creatures.

15- Through each chastisement which Thou hast kept back from him and each penalty of Thy vengeance and Thy punishment which Thou hast delayed from him, Thou hast refrained from Thy right and shown good pleasure in place of what Thou hast made obligatory. 16- So who is more generous, my God, than Thou? And who is more wretched than he who perishes in spite of Thee? Indeed, who? Thou art too blessed to be described by any but beneficence and too generous for any but justice to be feared from Thee!