We can say the same of the virtue of hope: for if the things we hope for in the life to come were said to be hoped for from men, we should deserve to be rejected as vain impostors — since men can both lie and are in no way able to bestow such exalted rewards. But we say they are to be hoped for not from man, but from God, who can neither lie, since He is truth; nor deceive, since He is goodness; nor is anything impossible with Him, since He is omnipotent. And so a rustic would rightly think himself mocked if someone promised him the wisdom of Solomon or the power of Augustus, because the one who promised him such things would be a lying and feeble man. But the Christian, to whom God has promised eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, and a paradise of every delight — why should he not hope?
Perhaps, it will be said, we lack pledges of God's perfect good will. But did not God, as a figure of the things now promised to us, lead His people through the Red Sea with dry foot? Did He not rain down manna upon them from heaven? Did He not bring forth water from the rock? Did He not at last bring them in by Joshua into the land of promise? Can so remarkable a figure be empty and void?
Then, if God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son (John 3), has He not with Him given us all things (Rom. 8)? What great thing do we hope to be given us by God that is not surpassed by the gift He has already given when we neither hoped for it nor asked? If He gave to sinners and enemies the death of His Son, will He not give to the justified and to friends the life of His Son? And not content with this, He added the Holy Spirit as a pledge of the inheritance (Eph. 1) — the Spirit who cries in our hearts, Abba, Father, and bears witness to our spirit that we are the sons of God; and if sons, heirs also: heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8).
Wherefore, even if the greatness of the things promised could seem to exceed our hope, yet it cannot exceed the greatness of Him who promises; and since that greatness is infinite, it can easily lift our hope to reach those promises without wavering. And this promise — as the Apostle proves in the Epistle to the Hebrews — God confirmed with an oath (Heb. 6), that through two unchangeable things, namely the promise of Him who cannot lie, we might hold fast our hope as an anchor safe and firm, entering even into the inner part of the veil, where Jesus has entered for us, made a high priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech.