The City of God

Cvenial sins, they fear them, they are rightly lashed with them temporally, although they are by no means punished eternally. Rightly do they feel this life to be bitter when they are divinely afflicted with them, for whose sweet lives they did not wish to be bitter while they were sinning. For if someone spares those who act wickedly in their rebuking and correcting, because they are seeking a more opportune time, or because they fear the people themselves might become worse because of it, or because they might hinder, press, and turn away other infirm people from the faith, this does not seem to be an occasion of greed, but a counsel of charity. That is culpable, however, where those who live differently and abhor the deeds of the wicked still spare the sins of others, which they ought to unteach or rebuke, while they guard against offending them, lest they harm them in those things which the good use lawfully and innocently, but yet more greedily than they ought as people who are strangers in this world and who bear before them the hope of the heavenly fatherland. For not only those who lead a weaker life, living in marriage, having children or seeking to have them, possessing homes and families—whom the Apostle addresses in the Church, teaching and warning how wives should live with husbands, and husbands with wives, and children with parents, and parents with children, and servants with masters, and masters with servants—gladly acquire many temporal, many earthly things, and bear the loss of them with difficulty: for which they do not dare to offend men whose most contaminated and wicked life displeases them; but even those who hold a higher rank of life, and are not entangled in conjugal bonds, and use only meager food and clothing, often abstain from their reprimand while they fear the traps and attacks of the wicked against their own reputation and safety. And although they do not fear them to the extent that they yield to committing similar things because of any of their threats or improprieties, they nevertheless often do not wish to rebuke the very things which they do not commit with them, when perhaps they could correct some by rebuking them; they fear that if they were not able, their own safety and reputation would come into danger and ruin. This is not out of the consideration that they see their own reputation and safety as necessary for the utility of instructing men, but rather out of the infirmity by which a flattering tongue and the day of man is pleasing, and the judgment of the vulgar, the torture of the flesh, or death is feared; this is because of certain bonds of greed, not because of the duties of charity.
D

It does not seem to me, therefore, that this is a small reason why both the good and the wicked are lashed when it pleases God to punish lost morals even with the affliction of temporal penalties. For they are lashed together, not because they live an equally evil life, but because they both love a temporal life, though not equally, yet both together; a life which the good ought to despise, so that the corrected and amended wicked might attain the eternal life. To attain this, if they did not wish to be companions, they should be borne and loved as enemies; because as long as they live, it is always uncertain whether they will change their will for the better. Therefore, they do not have an equal, but a far graver cause, to whom it is said through the prophet: "He shall indeed die in his sin, but I will require his blood from the hand of the watchman." Ezekiel 33 For watchmen, that is, those set over the people in the churches, were appointed to this end, that they should not spare in rebuking sins. Nor, however, is he entirely alienated from such a fault who, although he is not a person in charge, yet knows that many things should be admonished or argued in those with whom he is joined by the necessity of this life, and neglects them, avoiding their offenses because of those things which he uses in this life not as he ought, but takes more delight in them than he ought. Then the good have another cause for being afflicted with temporal evils, such as Job had: that the human soul itself might be tested and known to itself, by how much virtue of piety it loves God for nothing. When these things are rightly considered and perceived, let one attend whether any evil has happened to the faithful and pious which was not turned into good for them; unless perhaps one must think that that apostolic sentence is void, where he says, "We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good."

That nothing perishes for the saints in the loss of temporal things. Chap. X

They lost everything they had. Did they lose faith? Did they lose piety? Did they lose the goods of the inner man, who is rich before God? These are the riches of Christians, of whom...