The eighteenth point:

Doing good deeds also gives rise to further good deeds. Faith entails righteous deeds, and a righteous deed encourages others, both of the same kind and of different kinds. As has been said:

“Part of the reward for a good deed is another good deed that follows it.”

The mere absence of a bad deed, however, does not entail the absence of another bad deed, unless it involves deliberately refraining; in that case, it belongs among good deeds, as explained above. What produces a further outcome is better than what produces none. This argument is of the same kind as the preceding one.

The nineteenth point:

Doing is preferable to not doing when the act is known to be a good deed. For someone who is confused and uncertain, however, refraining may be better, so that he remains upon his natural disposition. Such is the condition of the rightly guided and the misguided, and the condition of . . . (1)

When doubts and desires arise in his heart, prompting disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience, this feeling and impulse will cease only through faith and righteousness that remove it or divert him from it—such as knowledge that dispels doubt and resolve that restrains desire. A person experiences this within himself, and it applies to everything: whatever has a cause sustaining it will cease only when something that counters it is present.

If it is said: “Yet that may cease through something permissible . . . (2).”