Liber Quintus, Caput XII. Deum et bonorum operum pium remuneratorem, et scelerum aequissimum vindicem esse.

Liber Quintus, Caput XII. Deum et bonorum operum pium remuneratorem, et scelerum aequissimum vindicem esse.

What is God? No less the punishment of the perverse than the glory of the humble. For there is a certain rational direction of equity, unchangeable and unswerving, reaching as it does everywhere: and every depravity dashed against it is necessarily thrown into confusion. Why shouldn't everything swollen or distorted dash against this and be shattered? Woe to the whole one, because an uprightness encountered by chance, not knowing how to yield, will have met it — for it is also a strength. What is so contrary and adverse to unjust wills as always striving, always dashing against it, and always in vain? Woe to the opposing wills, bringing back surely the punishment of their own aversion. What is so punishing as always to want what will never be? What is so doomed as a will enslaved to this double necessity of willing and not willing, so that whichever way it turns now, it moves no less perversely than miserably? It will never obtain what it wants, and what it doesn't want, it will endure forever nonetheless. It's fitting, then: whatever is shaped by what is proper will never amount to nothing, and whatever is shaped by what is pleasing will never come to anything. Who does this? Upright is the Lord our God, who is himself turned about by the perverse. The upright and the crooked will never agree. For they are opposed to one another, even if they don't harm one another. Harm belongs to another — far be it that it belongs to God. It's hard for you, he says, to kick against the goad — and that hardness isn't in the goad, but in the one kicking. And God is the punishment of shameful things: for he is light. And what is so hateful to obscene and shameful minds? Surely everyone who does evil hates the light.^✦ But I ask: won't they be able to turn aside? Not at all. It shines everywhere, even if not for everyone. In the end, it shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.^✦ The Light sees darkness—for whom seeing is the same as shining—but the darkness does not see It in return, because darkness cannot comprehend It.^✦ And so they are seen, in order to be put to shame; and they do not see, so that they may find no comfort. They are seen not only by the light but in the light. By whom, or by what? By every beholder, so that the greater the number who look on, the greater the shame. Yet in so vast a crowd of onlookers, no eye is more unwelcome to each person than their own. There is no gaze, whether in heaven or on earth, that a dark conscience would more wish to flee and is less able to. Darkness cannot even hide itself. They see themselves, and nothing else. The works of darkness pursue them, and there's nowhere they can hide from them—not even in darkness itself. This is the worm that does not die: the memory of past things.^✦ Once thrust in—or rather, born in through sin—it clings so firmly that it can never be torn away. It never stops gnawing at the conscience, and feeding on that truly unfailing food, it keeps life going on and on. I shudder at the gnawing worm and the long-lived death. I shudder to fall into the hands of a death that lives, and a life that dies. This second death, which never kills, but always kills. Who would give them once to die, so that they don't die for eternity? Who say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us'—who unless they wish to end death by the benefit of death or to escape it? Finally, they will call upon death, he says, and it won't come. Consider this more clearly. It's established that the soul is immortal, and it can't live at any time without its own memory, lest it should happen that the soul doesn't exist at some time. Therefore, while the soul endures, memory also endures. But what kind? Foul with shameful deeds, horrid with crimes, swollen with vanity, rough with contempt, and neglected besides. The things that came before have passed away — and yet they have not passed away. They have passed out of your hand, but not out of your mind. What has been done cannot be undone. For even though the doing was in time, the having done remains forever. What transcends time is not swept away with time. Therefore, into eternity it is inevitable that you will be tormented by the memory of what you have wickedly done — forever. To test this will be the truth of that voice: 'I will accuse you, and I will set myself against you.' The Lord has spoken, to whom everything is adverse, and it is necessary to be opposed to himself, so that the complaint may be late: O guardian of men, why have you set me against yourself, and I have become a burden to myself?^✦1 It is so, O Eugenius. Nothing can be contrary to God and yet cohere with itself, but whoever is reproved by God will also be reproved by himself. It is surely not the case then that reason can disguise the truth, or that the soul can turn away from the gaze of reason, once it has been torn from its bodily limbs and gathered into itself. For how could that be effective, with the senses silenced and locked away in death—senses through which it was certainly in the habit of slipping out too curiously, and departing from itself into the passing form of this world? Do you see that nothing is lacking to the shameful for their confusion, when they are brought forward to become a spectacle to God, to the Angels, to men, and to themselves?^✦ O how badly all the wicked are situated, certainly set in opposition to this torrent of direct fairness, and exposed to this light of revealed truth. Isn't this to be perpetually battered, and perpetually put to shame? With a double crushing, he says, crush them, Lord our God.