Section CXLIII

Jerome proceeds to confirm¹ that this is proper to the Lord: that even when he rages he loves, and, for as long as we live, seeks our salvation, where he explains the words of God in Ezekiel² thus:

Do not think that your thoughts by which you blaspheme against me can be fulfilled. For you say: “We are unwilling to be under the Lord or to be called his people; but just as all the nations are in the whole world, and each nation lives by its own choice, so as to worship wood and stones and serve idols, we also shall be one nation among many.” To these things God responds and swears by himself and says: “I shall not abandon you or contemn you, as negligent masters are accustomed to contemn fugitive servants; but I shall draw you back under my dominion, and with arm extended and striking and with fury poured out I shall bring you back into your former servitude, and I shall reign over you, so that, whether you will or will not, you may have me as king and may perceive an angry king, whose clemency you have neglected.”

And this will spares itself in no way and omits no means by which it might tame and conquer the obstinacy of men. For to the words of God which follow³, Jerome appends this commentary⁴:

Nor, he says, do I suffer you to be among the nations or to be detained in eternal captivity; but I shall bring you forth from the peoples and gather you from the lands into which hostile necessity dispersed you here and there to serve.

But I shall do these things not that I may destroy and blot you out, but that I may be your king. From this we understand that even what the heretics call the cruelty of the Creator sounds forth clemency: since for this reason he is angry and rages and pours out all his fury, that he may draw back into his own kingdom those who chose to serve the tyranny of demons.

For nothing is truer than that which Jerome testifies concerning God⁵:

He does not spare that he may spare; he is cruel that he may have mercy; nor does he consider the pain of the sufferer, but the health of the wound, according to that Gospel saying⁶, willing rather that one member perish than that the whole body be destroyed.

To this merciful economy must also be attributed this: that after relating the words of Amos⁷, “The Lord God will not do a word unless he has revealed his secret, or his correction, to his servants the prophets,” Jerome adds⁸:

Not that God reveals to the prophets all the things which he does in heaven or has already done before, but the things which he is about to do upon earth. He revealed to Noah his servant⁹ that he was about to bring in the flood. He revealed to his servants Abraham and Lot¹⁰ that he was about to burn Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim. He revealed to Joseph¹¹ the interpretation of the dream of seven years of famine in Egypt, and to the prophet Jonah¹² the overthrow of Nineveh, so that those who heard the punishments to come might either do penance and avoid the torments, or, contemning them, be punished more justly. Thus even now the Lord reveals through Amos, his servant and prophet, what he is about to do to the ten tribes, so that, if they are converted to better things and abandon the idols, they may be freed from the impending danger. And note that the clement and benign God always foretells future things, lest he be compelled to inflict punishments. And what the heretics calumniate in the Creator as though he were severe and fierce, cruel and only a judge—

—because there is no evil in a city which he does not do—this we refer to the greatness of mercy, because he does not inflict penalties unless he has first foretold them. But he who foretells does not will to punish sinners.