The Sermon on the Mount used to prove that God’s law was always mental and that outward observance was never what was asked. Man still thinks adultery is a physical act, and still believes that by attending his temple and doing the outward things he is keeping the law. But any man who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the act. Neville presses the case where the man does NOT perform it - he restrains the impulse because he is afraid of the consequences, or because he contemplates the disgrace it would bring on himself and his family - and refuses him the credit: that does not excuse him from the act, because the very contemplation of the act was the act. So the whole thing is lifted to a mental level, and the conclusion he wants is not guilt but consistency: if the law is mental in its prohibitions it is mental in its promises too, which is why the man who wants work can be gainfully employed in his imagination and go to sleep in that state regardless of the evidence of his senses. The same demonstration is used at 1033, 1235, 1344, 1414, 1769 and 1908.