A Good Outcome Does Not Help the Wicked

To make these statements clear by examples from Holy Scripture: what could have been brought about that was more healing, and more for the good of the whole world, than the saving remedy of the Lord’s Passion? And yet it was not only of no advantage to the traitor through whom it is shown to have been brought about, but was actually to his harm, so that it is said of him outright: “It would have been good for that man if he had never been born.” For the fruit of his labor will be repaid to him not according to the actual result, but according to what he wanted to do and believed he would accomplish. [a]

Again, what could be more blameworthy than craft and deceit practiced even on a stranger, not to mention on one’s own brother and father? And yet the patriarch Jacob not only met with no condemnation or blame for such things, but was actually endowed with the everlasting inheritance of the blessing. And not without reason. Jacob desired the blessing meant for the firstborn, not out of a greedy desire for present gain, but because of his faith in everlasting sanctification, while Judas delivered the Redeemer of all to death, not for the sake of human salvation, but out of the sin of greed. So in each case the fruit of their action is reckoned according to the intention of the mind and the purpose of the will: the aim of the one was not to commit fraud, and the aim of the other was not to bring about salvation. For it is just that each man is repaid, as the recompense of his reward, for what he first conceived in his mind, and not for what came of it, whether well or badly, against the wish of the one who did it. So the most just Judge regarded the man who ventured on such a falsehood as excusable, and indeed worthy of praise, because without it he could not secure the blessing of the firstborn; and what arose from desire for the blessing should not be counted as a sin. Otherwise the patriarch we have named would have been not only unfair to his brother but also a cheat of his father and a blasphemer, if there had been any other way by which he could secure the gift of that blessing, and he had preferred to follow this one, which would damage and injure his brother.

You see, then, that with God the question is not how the act was carried out, but what the purpose of the mind was. With this preparation, then, for returning to the question you raised (for which all this has been laid down beforehand), I want you first to tell me for what reason you bound yourselves in the chains of that promise.