Verse 9: 'Or will it please Him, from whom nothing can be hidden? Or will He be deceived, like a man, by your frauds?' 39. Heretics offend God while they pretend to defend Him. — Heretics practise fraud upon God, because they assert things which by no means please Him for whom they speak; and while they strive, as it were, to defend Him, they offend Him, while they fall in the very adversity of Him whom they seem by their preaching to serve. Whence also through the Psalmist it is said: 'That You may destroy the enemy and the defender' (Ps. 8:5). For every heretic is both enemy and defender of Almighty God, because from that very thing whereby he strives as it were to defend Him, he thereby opposes His truth.
But because nothing can lie hidden from God, He judges in them that which they inwardly feel, not that which they outwardly seem to serve. Because, therefore, God as a man is not deceived by their frauds, it is rightly subjoined: