Prescribed for you is, to fight against the soul and Satan 'though it be hateful to you', more bitter than the taste of colocynth and more terrible than the bone-crunching bite of a lion. Yet it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, because you veil yourselves with the caprice of the soul and the love of quick pleasure from what is within [that struggle] in the way of much good and tremendous spiritual pleasure that scorns that shortlived hardship when compared with that enduring good and timeless everlasting pleasure; the same applies to the opposite [statement] [and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you]. And God knows, the good and the evil that affairs entail, and you do not know, these things because of your being veiled by the here and now from what will be and by the manifest from the hidden.
