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| Of the Universal Peace Which the Law of Nature Preserves Through All Disturbances, and by Which Every One Reaches His Desert in a Way Regulated by the Just Judge.
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Chapter 13.—Of the Universal
Peace Which the Law of Nature Preserves Through All Disturbances,
and by Which Every One Reaches His Desert in a Way Regulated by the
Just Judge.
The peace of the body then consists
in the duly proportioned arrangement of its parts. The peace of
the irrational soul is the harmonious repose of the appetites, and
that of the rational soul the harmony of knowledge and action.
The peace of body and soul is the well-ordered and harmonious life
and health of the living creature. Peace between man and God is
the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. Peace between
man and man is well-ordered concord. Domestic peace is the
well-ordered concord between those of the family who rule and those
who obey. Civil peace is a similar concord among the citizens.
The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and
harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The peace
of all things is the tranquillity of order. Order is the
distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own
place. And hence, though the miserable, in so far as they are
such, do certainly not enjoy peace, but are severed from that
tranquillity of order in which there is no disturbance,
nevertheless, inasmuch as they are deservedly and justly miserable,
they are by their very misery connected with order. They are not,
indeed, conjoined with the blessed, but they are disjoined from
them by the law of order. And though they are disquieted, their
circumstances are notwithstanding adjusted to them, and
consequently they have some tranquillity of order, and therefore
some peace. But they are wretched because, although not wholly
miserable, they are not in that place where any mixture of misery
is impossible. They would, however, be more wretched if they had
not that peace which arises from being in harmony with the natural
order of things. When they suffer, their peace is in so far
disturbed; but their peace continues in so far as they do not
suffer, and in so far as their nature continues to exist. As,
then, there may be life without pain, while there cannot be pain
without some kind of life, so there may be peace without war, but
there cannot be war without some kind of peace, because war
supposes the existence of some natures to wage it, and these
natures cannot exist without peace of one kind or other.
And therefore there is a nature in
which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a
nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of
the devil himself is evil, in so far as it is nature, but it was
made evil by being perverted. Thus he did not abide in the
truth,1282
but could
not escape the judgment of the Truth; he did not abide in the
tranquillity of order, but did not therefore escape the power of
the Ordainer. The good imparted by God to his nature did not
screen him from the justice of God by which order was preserved in
his punishment; neither did God punish the good which He had
created, but the evil which the devil had committed. God did not
take back all He had imparted to his nature, but something He took
and something He left, that there might remain enough to be
sensible of the loss of what was taken. And this very sensibility
to pain is evidence of the good which has been taken away and the
good which has been left. For, were nothing good left, there
could be no pain on account of the good which had been lost. For
he who sins is still worse if he rejoices in his loss of
righteousness. But he who is in pain, if he derives no benefit
from it, mourns at least the loss of health. And as righteousness
and health are both good things, and as the loss of any good thing
is matter of grief, not of joy,—if, at least, there is no
compensation, as spiritual righteousness may compensate for the
loss of bodily health,—certainly it is more suitable for
a
wicked man to grieve in punishment than to rejoice in his fault.
As, then, the joy of a sinner who has abandoned what is good is
evidence of a bad will, so his grief for the good he has lost when
he is punished is evidence of a good nature. For he who laments
the peace his nature has lost is stirred to do so by some relics of
peace which make his nature friendly to itself. And it is very
just that in the final punishment the wicked and godless should in
anguish bewail the loss of the natural advantages they enjoyed, and
should perceive that they were most justly taken from them by that
God whose benign liberality they had despised. God, then, the
most wise Creator and most just Ordainer of all natures, who placed
the human race upon earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men
some good things adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace, such
as we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human
fellowship, and all things needful for the preservation and
recovery of this peace, such as the objects which are accommodated
to our outward senses, light, night, the air, and waters suitable
for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter, heal,
or beautify it: and all under this most equitable condition, that
every man who made a good use of these advantages suited to the
peace of this mortal condition, should receive ampler and better
blessings, namely, the peace of immortality, accompanied by glory
and honor in an endless life made fit for the enjoyment of God and
of one another in God; but that he who used the present blessings
badly should both lose them and should not receive the
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