The City of God

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envied them: I do not accuse what I do not know, nor do I hear what your interrogated hearts answer you. Yet if they answer that it is so, do not marvel that you have lost that for which you were eager to please men, and that that has remained for you which cannot be shown to men. If you did not consent to those sinning, the divine aid of grace came forward, so that it might not be lost: human reproach succeeded to human glory, so that it might not be loved. Be comforted in both, you faint-hearted: on one side you are tested, on the other chastised: on one side justified, on the other amended. But those whose hearts, when interrogated, answer that they never prided themselves on the good of virginity or widowhood or marital modesty, but by consenting to the humble, rejoiced with trembling over the gift of God, and never envied anyone’s equal excellence of holiness and chastity: but having set aside human praise, which is usually bestowed all the more because the good is rarer, preferred rather to wish that their number were greater than that they themselves should stand out more in a minority. Nor do even these, who are such, if the barbaric lust has oppressed some of them, claim that this was permitted: nor should they believe that God neglects these things, because He permits what no one commits with impunity. For certain things, like the weights of evil desires, are both released by a hidden divine present judgment and reserved for the manifest final one. Perhaps, however, those who are well aware that they did not puff up their hearts with this good of chastity, and yet have suffered hostile violence in the flesh, had some latent infirmity which could be puffed up into the pride of arrogance if they had escaped this humility during that devastation. Just as some were snatched away by death, lest malice should change their understanding, so some had strength snatched away from them, lest prosperity should change their modesty. Therefore, for both, those who were already priding themselves on their flesh—that they had suffered the touch of no one—or who perhaps could have prided themselves if they had not been handled by the violence of the enemies: chastity was not taken away, but humility was persuaded. The tumor of the former was met by what was impending, the latter was met by what was imminent. Although this also must not be passed over in silence: that to some who have suffered these things, it could have seemed that the good of continence was to be counted among bodily goods, and that it remains if the body is not touched by the lust of any man, but that it is not placed in the strength of will aided by God alone, so that both body and spirit may be holy: nor that it is such a good that it could not be taken away against the will of the soul. This error was perhaps removed from them. For when they think with what conscience they served God, and with unwavering faith do not feel about Him—that He could in any way abandon those serving Him and invoking Him so—no matter how much chastity pleases Him, they cannot doubt, and they see that it follows that He would never have permitted these things to happen to His saints if the holiness which He conferred upon them and loves in them could perish in that way.

Therefore, every family of the highest and true God has its own consolation, not deceitful, nor established in the hope of shifting or falling things, and it does not regret this temporal life itself, in which it is educated for the eternal one, and it uses earthly goods as a pilgrim, and is not captured by them, but is either tested or amended by evils. But those who insult its goodness, and say to it, when they happen to fall into some temporal evils: "Where is your God?" Let them say: "Where are their gods, when they suffer such things: for the avoiding of which they either worship them or contend that they should be worshipped?" For this is the answer: "My God is everywhere present, everywhere whole, nowhere enclosed: who can be present and remain hidden, and be absent without being moved. When He agitates me with adverse things, He either examines my merits or chastises my sins, and reserves eternal reward for me for the temporal evils tolerated piously. But you, who are you, with whom it is worthy to speak at least about your gods, how much more about my God, who is terrible above all gods, since all the gods of the gentiles are demons, but the Lord made the heavens."