2.1

To my beloved and honorable brothers, greetings in the Lord. Truly, beloved in the Lord, God does not visit His creatures at one time only. From the foundation of the world, whenever people came to God their Maker through the law of the covenant, God was present with each one in simplicity, by grace, through His Spirit. But as for the rational natures in which that covenant grew cold and the functions of their minds died, so that they no longer sought to know themselves according to their former condition, some became altogether irrational and served the creation rather than the Creator. Yet the same Creator, in His own goodness, visited us through the law of the covenant, because the substance is immortal. Therefore, all who were counted worthy of grace and grew through their fundamental law, and were taught by the Holy Spirit and received the Spirit of adoption, were able to worship their own Creator as they ought. Of them Paul says that they did not receive the promises because of us.