anything that these entail. Rather, He grants him such reward and nearness as no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has imagined. Wherever He withholds this, its cause—righteous deeds—is absent.

There is no doubt that He guides whom He wills and leads astray whom He wills, but all of this proceeds from His wisdom and justice. His withholding of the causes, namely righteous deeds, is an expression of His wisdom and justice. As for the effects, once their causes exist, He never withholds them unless those causes are ineffective, either because of some defect in the deed or because another cause opposes what it entails and would otherwise produce. Thus, either the requisite cause is absent or an impediment is present. Since His withholding and His punishment for the absence of faith and righteous deeds in the first place proceed from His wisdom and justice, praise belongs to Him in both circumstances. He is worthy of praise in every circumstance: every gift from Him is grace, and every punishment from Him is justice.

Many people err on this point when quoting poetry and in their spiritual feelings. They draw analogies with what occurs between human lovers and their beloveds, or masters and slaves: the sincerity of the lover or slave in his love and his exertion of every effort, and the love, aversion, and rejection of the beloved or master—as in the verse that