Edition Hide
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXV: De ira dei, quae incommutabilem tranquillitatem nulla inflammatione perturbat.

Ira dei non perturbatio animi eius est, sed iudicium quo inrogatur poena peccato. cogitatio uero eius et recogitatio mutandarum rerum est inmutabilis ratio. neque enim sicut hominem, ita deum cuiusquam facti sui paenitet, cuius est de omnibus omnino rebus tam fixa sententia quam certa praescientia. sed si non utatur scriptura talibus uerbis, non se quodammodo familiarius insinuabit omni generi hominum, quibus uult esse consultum, ut et perterreat superbientes et excitet neglegentes, et exerceat quaerentes et alat intellegentes; quod non faceret, si non se prius inclinaret et quodammodo descenderet ad iacentes. quod autem etiam interitum omnium animalium terrenorum uolatiliumque denuntiat, magnitudinem futurae cladis effatur, non animantibus rationis expertibus, tamquam et ipsa peccauerint, minatur exitium.

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The City of God

Chapter 25.--Of the Anger of God, Which Does Not Inflame His Mind, Nor Disturb His Unchangeable Tranquillity.

The anger of God is not a disturbing emotion of His mind, but a judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin. His thought and reconsideration also are the unchangeable reason which changes things; for He does not, like man, repent of anything He has done, because in all matters His decision is as inflexible as His prescience is certain. But if Scripture were not to use such expressions as the above, it would not familiarly insinuate itself into the minds of all classes of men, whom it seeks access to for their good, that it may alarm the proud, arouse the careless, exercise the inquisitive, and satisfy the intelligent; and this it could not do, did it not first stoop, and in a manner descend, to them where they lie. But its denouncing death on all the animals of earth and air is a declaration of the vastness of the disaster that was approaching: not that it threatens destruction to the irrational animals as if they too had incurred it by sin.