Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II:
City of God: Chapter 13

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 p. 410 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 others.

Footnotes

John 8.44.