ges became suddenly so mild as to set apart
spacious basilicas and to fill them with people on whom they had mercy;
no one might be killed therein nor any dragged from thence. Who does not
see that this is due to the name of Christ and to a Christian age? Who
can deny that these sanguinary hordes were bridled by Him Who had said:
"I will visit their sins with the rod, but will not take my mercy from
them"?

All natures, because they exist and therefore have their manner and
species and a certain peace with themselves, are good; and when they are
in the places belonging to the order of nature, they preserve the being
which they have received.

The truest cause of the felicity of the good angels is to be found in
this, that they adhere to Him Who supremely is; and the cause of the
misery of bad angels lies in this, that they have turned away from Him
Who supremely is, to themselves, who have not supreme being. This vice
has no other name but pride, which is the beginning of every sin. They
refused to preserve their strength for Him, and so threw away that in
which all their greatness consisted. It is vain to seek for an efficient
cause for the bad will; we have to do, not with anything efficient, but
with a deficiency. The mere defection from that which supremely is to
things which are on a lower grade of being is to begin to have a bad
will.

Now God founded mankind, not as the angels, so that even did they sin
they should not die; but in such a way that did they obey, they should
enter, without death, on a blessed eternity; but, did they disobey, they
should suffer the most just penalty, both of body and of soul. For
though the human soul is truly said to be immortal, yet is there a sense
in which it dies when God forsakes it.

Only because they had begun inwardly to be evil did the first of mankind
fall into overt disobedience. A bad will had preceded the bad action,
and of that bad will the beginning was pride, or the appetite for an
inordinate rank. To lift oneself up is in itself to be cast down and to
fall. Wherefore humility is most highly of all things commended in and
to the City of God, and in Christ her King; but the contrary vice of
arrogance especially rules her adversary, the devil, and this is
unquestionably the great difference by which the two cities are divided,
and the society of the pious from the society of the impious. Thus two
loves have founded two cities, the love of Self extending to contemp