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The City of God

Chapter 31.--What Benefits God Gives to the Followers of the Truth to Enjoy Over and Above His General Bounty.

For, besides such benefits as, according to this administration of nature of which we have made some mention, He lavishes on good and bad alike, we have from Him a great manifestation of great love, which belongs only to the good. For although we can never sufficiently give thanks to Him, that we are, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek after Him who made all these things, nevertheless, what hearts, what number of tongues, shall affirm that they are sufficient to render thanks to Him for this, that He hath not wholly departed from us, laden and overwhelmed with sins, averse to the contemplation of His light, and blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, but hath sent to us His own Word, who is His only Son, that by His birth and suffering for us in the flesh, which He assumed, we might know how much God valued man, and that by that unique sacrifice we might be purified from all our sins, and that, love being shed abroad in our hearts by His Spirit, we might, having surmounted all difficulties, come into eternal rest, and the ineffable sweetness of the contemplation of Himself?

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXXI: Quibus proprie beneficiis dei excepta generali largitate sectatores ueritatis utantur.

Habemus enim ab illo praeter huiuscemodi beneficia, quae ex hac, de qua nonnulla diximus, administratione naturae bonis malisque largitur, magnum et bonorum proprium magnae dilectionis indicium. quamquam enim, quod sumus, quod uiuimus, quod caelum terramque conspicimus, quod habemus mentem atque rationem, qua eum ipsum, qui haec omnia condidit, inquiramus, nequaquam ualeamus actioni sufficere gratiarum: tamen quod nos oneratos obrutosque peccatis et a contemplatione suae lucis auersos ac tenebrarum, id est iniquitatis, dilectione caecatos non omnino deseruit misitque nobis uerbum suum, qui est eius unicus filius, quo pro nobis adsumpta carne nato atque passo, quanti deus hominem penderet, nosceremus atque illo sacrificio singulari a peccatis omnibus mundaremur eiusque spiritu in cordibus nostris dilectione diffusa omnibus difficultatibus superatis in aeternam requiem et contemplationis eius ineffabilem dulcedinem ueniremus, quae corda, quot linguae ad agendas ei gratias satis esse contenderint?