The City of God

AReflecting on these things, some, by repenting, correct themselves from their impiety. Others, however, as the Apostle says, despise the riches of the goodness and long-suffering of God and, according to the hardness of their heart and their impenitent heart, treasure up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works. Nevertheless, the patience of God invites the wicked to repentance, just as the scourge of God instructs the good in patience. Likewise, the mercy of God embraces the good by nourishing and punishing them, just as the severity of God chastises the wicked so that they may be punished. It has indeed pleased divine providence to prepare hereafter for the just those good things which the unjust will not enjoy, and for the wicked those evils by which the good will not be tormented. But God willed that these temporal goods and evils be common to both, so that neither should goods be sought too greedily, which are seen to be held by the wicked, nor should evils be shamefully avoided, by which the good are also often affected. It matters very much, however, what use is made of those things which are called prosperous or those which are called adverse. For the good man is neither puffed up by temporal goods nor broken by temporal evils, while the wicked man is punished by such unhappiness precisely because he is corrupted by happiness. Yet God often shows His operation more evidently in the distribution of these things. For if every sin were punished by manifest penalty now, nothing would be thought to be reserved for the final judgment. On the other hand, if the divinity did not punish any sin openly now, it would be believed that there is no divine providence. Similarly, in fruitful matters, if God did not grant them to certain people who ask with the most evident generosity, we would not say that these things pertain to Him. Likewise, if He gave them to all who asked, we would think that we should only serve Him for such rewards, and such service would not make us pious, but rather greedy and avaricious. Since these things are so, even if good and evil men are afflicted alike, they are not on that account indistinguishable, because the thing they suffer is not distinguishable. For the unlikeness of those who suffer remains within the likeness of the sufferings, and though they are under the same torment, virtue and vice are not the same. For just as under one fire gold glows and straw smokes, and under the same threshing sled stalks are crushed while wheat is purified, and the dregs B are not confused with the oil because they are pressed by the same weight of the press: so one and the same force, rushing in, tests, purifies, and refines the good; it condemns, wastes, and exterminates the wicked. Hence, in the same affliction, the wicked detest and blaspheme God, but the good pray and praise Him. So much it matters, not what one suffers, but what kind of person one is while suffering. For by the same movement, filth exhales horribly and ointment smells sweetly.

On the causes of corrections, for which both the good

and the wicked are lashed alike. Chap. IX

What, therefore, did Christians suffer in that devastation of things, which would not better redound to their progress if they faithfully considered these matters? First, by humbly reflecting on those very sins for which God, in His indignation, filled the world with such calamities, even if they are far removed from the criminal, the flagitious, and the impious, they do not consider themselves so far alienated from such faults as to judge themselves unworthy of suffering temporal evils for them. Excepting the fact that everyone, however laudably they live, yields in some things to carnal concupiscence—and if not to the enormity of crimes and a whirlpool of flagitious acts and the abomination of impiety, then at least to certain sins, whether rare or, if smaller, more frequent. This being excepted, who is easily found who holds those very people—for whose horrendous pride, luxury, and avarice, and for whose execrable iniquities and impieties God, just as He foretold by His threats, destroys the lands—in the way they ought to be held, and lives with them as one must live with such people? For it is often poorly hidden by those whose duty it is to teach, admonish, and sometimes even rebuke and correct them, whether because they are weary of the labor, or because they are ashamed to offend those in whose presence they are, or because they avoid their enmity so as not to be hindered or harmed in these temporal affairs, whether they are those our greed still desires to gain or those our infirmity fears to lose. Thus, although the life of the wicked is displeasing to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that condemnation which is prepared for such people after this life, yet because they spare their damnable sins while they, in their own—albeit light and venial—sins...