Section LXXXVI

For although, Origen writes¹, certain things occur in the Scriptures which seem to persuade that some are abandoned by God,

nevertheless, those who endeavor according to their strength to prove that God provides for the immortal soul in various ways preserve piety toward God and his Christ in all things.

For, disputing² on the occasion of the words in Jeremiah³, “Have I become a solitude to the house of Israel, or a late-sown land?” he says: οὐδενὶ ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ θεός, “God is a solitude to no one.”

He is a solitude to no one μετὰ τὰς καθολικὰς εὐεργεσίας, according to the general benefits,

since he⁴ makes his sun rise upon the good and the evil; to no one is he a late-sown land, since

he⁵ rains upon the just and the unjust. How is he a solitude, who governs the mind of each so that it may participate in reason and acquire knowledge, and so that what can be understood concerning him through the senses may be laid bare? Ἔστιν οὖν οὐδενὶ ἔρημος ὡς πρὸς τὸν καθόλου λόγον ὁ θεός; therefore, as regards the general reason, God is a solitude to no one.

But as regards singular benefits⁶, God again of himself is a solitude to no one, and rightly employs these words:

I indeed have not become a solitude to you, nor a wild land; but you⁷ said: “We shall not be subject to the Lord, nor shall we come to thee any more.”

From these things it is evident⁸

that men abandoned the fountain of living water; the fountain of living water did not abandon men. Καὶ γὰρ ἀπ᾽ οὐδενὸς θεὸς μακρύνει ἑαυτόν, ἀλλ᾽ οἱ μακρύνοντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἀπολοῦνται. For God withdraws himself from no one, but those who withdraw themselves from him shall perish. Rather, God draws near to certain persons and meets the one coming to him. Therefore, when the son who had devoured⁹ his goods returned, the Father met him. And he promises through the Prophets¹⁰, saying: “I shall draw near to them as the garment of their body.” For God says: “I am a God drawing near, and not a God afar off,” says the Lord… Wherefore, οὐ φεύγει τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος, ἀλλὰ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἁμαρτάνων, the water of the Holy Spirit does not flee, but each one of us, while he sins, flees lest he drink from the water of the Holy Spirit.

For God¹¹

reproves men placed in the flesh, beats, and scourges them. For he does not will¹² the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live. And therefore, benign and merciful, he repays the sins of the fathers in their children, so that, because the fathers—that is,

the devil and his angels—are unworthy¹³ to be reproved in the present age but will receive in the future what they merit, their children—that is, those whom they have persuaded to sin and who have nevertheless been admitted by them into the fellowship and society of sin—may receive here what they have done, so that they may proceed more purified to the future age and no longer be made companions of the devil in punishment. Therefore, because the Lord is merciful and¹⁴ wills all men to be saved, he therefore¹⁵ says: “I shall visit their crimes with an iron rod and their sins with scourges; but I shall not remove my mercy from them.”

Therefore the Lord visits souls and seeks those whom that most wicked father has begotten by the persuasion of sin, and says¹⁶ to each of them: “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline thy ear, and forget thy people and the house of thy father.” Therefore he visits thee after sin, admonishes thee, and in scourge and rod visits thee for the sin which thy father the devil suggested to thee, that he may repay it into thy bosom, that is, while thou passest thy life in the body… For God is jealous, and the soul which he espoused to himself in faith he does not will to remain in the contamination of sin; but he wills it to be purified quickly and speedily to cast away all its uncleannesses, if by chance it has been subjected to any. But if it remains in sins and says, “We shall not hear the voice of the Lord, but in doing we shall do our wills and shall kindle a fire to the queen of heaven,” as is reproached through the Prophet¹⁷, then they too are reserved for that sentence of Wisdom¹⁸ which says: “Because I called and you did not obey, but derided my words, therefore I also shall laugh over your perdition”; or for that which was set down for them in the Gospel¹⁹, when the Lord says: “Depart from me into the eternal fire which God prepared for the devil and his angels.”