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| Of the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Often Indiscriminately Accrue to Good and Wicked Men.
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Chapter 8.—Of the Advantages and
Disadvantages Which Often Indiscriminately Accrue to Good and
Wicked Men.
Will some one say, Why, then, was
this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and
ungrateful? Why, but because it was the mercy of Him who daily
“maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and on the unjust.”48
For though some of these men,
taking thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform,
some, as the apostle says, “despising the riches of His goodness
and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart,
treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and
revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to
every man according to his deeds:”49
nevertheless does the patience of
God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of
God educates the good to patience. And so, too, does the mercy of
God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of
God arrests the wicked to punish them. To the divine providence
it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the
righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and
for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be
tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills,
God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might
not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally
to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even
good men often suffer.
There is, too, a very great
difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call
adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither
uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but
the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s
happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.50
| 50
So Cyprian (Contra Demetrianum) says:
Pænam de adversis mundi ille sentit, cui et lœtitia et gloria
omnis in mundo est. | Yet often, even in the present
distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His own
interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest
punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final
judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly
divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine
providence at all. And so of the good things of this life: if
God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of
those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good
things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who
sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of
His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy
rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer
alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the
men themselves, because there is no
difference in what they both
suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains
an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same
anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same
fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under
the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is
cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though
squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence
of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins,
exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same
affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray
and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills
are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up
with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment
emits a fragrant odor.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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