So much for this point, but it is well to have considered this truth also, that God is the cause of good things only and of nothing at all that is bad, since He Himself was the most ancient of beings and the good in its most perfect form. And it best becomes Him that the work of His hands should be akin to His nature, surpassing in excellence even as He surpasses, but that the chastisement of the wicked should be assured through His underlings. My thoughts are attested also by the words of him who was made perfect through practice, “the God who nourisheth me from my youth; the angel who saveth me from all evils” (Gen. 48:15, 16). For he, too, hereby confesses that the truly good gifts, which nourish virtue-loving souls, are referred to God alone as their cause, but on the other hand the province of things evil has been committed to angels (though neither have they full and absolute power of punishment), that nothing which tends to destruction should have its origin in Him whose nature is to save. Therefore he says, “Come and let us go down and confound them.” The impious indeed deserve to have it as their punishment, that God’s beneficent and merciful and bountiful powers should be brought into association with works of vengeance. Yet, though knowing that punishment was salutary for the human race, He decreed that it should be exacted by others. It was meet that while mankind was judged to deserve correction, the fountains of God’s ever-flowing gifts of grace should be kept free not only from all that is, but from all that is deemed to be, evil.
On the Confusion of Tongues 36
Tap any verse to see what it echoes — and start a chain or echo from it.