All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the recent calamity--all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery--was the result of the custom of war.But what was novel, was that savage barbarians showed themselves in so gentle a guise, that the largest churches were chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to whom quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from them none forcibly dragged;that into them many were led by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by merciless foes.Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this, and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one from praising it, is mad.Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians.Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvellously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, "Iwill visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them."(1)CHAP.8.--OF THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES WHICH OFTEN INDISCRIMINATELYACCRUE 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."(2) 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:"(3) 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.(4) 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.
CHAP.9.--OF THE REASONS FOR ADMINISTERING CORRECTION TO BAD AND GOODTOGETHER.
What, then, have the Christians suffered in that calamitous period, which would not profit every one who duly and faithfully considered the following circumstances? First of all, they must humbly consider those very sins which have provoked God to fill the world with such terrible disasters; for although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills.For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.But not to mention this, where can we readily find a man who holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions threatened? Where is the man who lives with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them?
