CHAPTER XLI.

These judgements are attributable to your misdeeds.

CONSEQUENTLY it is you, by whom God is contemned and statues worshipped, who are the troublers of mankind, it is you who are the provokers of public calamities and evils. For surely one is bound to hold it more likely that He Who is neglected, rather than those who are worshipped, should be angry; or else the gods are most unjust if, on account of the Christians, they injure their own worshippers also, whom they ought to separate from the deserts of the Christians. 'This argument,' you say, 'recoils upon your own God also, Who Himself, too, allows His own worshippers to be injured on account of the wicked.' First, however, learn some knowledge of His counsels, and you will not use this retort. For He Who has [122] appointed an eternal judgement once for all after the end of the world, does not prematurely, before the end, hasten that separation which is an essential feature of that judgement ¹¹¹. In the meantime He is impartial towards the whole of mankind, both in favouring and in chastising them: He has willed that good and evil shall be shared alike by His own servants and by the wicked, so that all should experience in an equal measure both His mercy and His severity. And because we have thus learnt from Him, we love His mercy and fear His severity, while you on the other hand despise both: and it follows that all the plagues of this world come from God upon us, if at all, for our admonition, upon you for your punishment Yet we are not really injured at all: firstly, because we have no concern in this world except how to depart from it as quickly as possible ¹¹²; and secondly, because if any affliction does distress us, it is attributable to your misdeeds. But even if some afflictions do slightly touch us as well, since we are closely connected with you, we rejoice rather in the recognition of the divine prophecies, which confirm the assurance and trustworthiness of our hope. But if all these evils come upon you for our sake from those whom you worship, why do you persist in worshipping such ungrateful and such unjust beings, who ought rather to help and assist you to the grief of the Christians? [123]