12. So then, he that is left without chastisement is so left by the Divine judgment, and God is long-suffering towards some sinners, not without reason, but because it will be good for them, having regard to the immortality of the soul and eternal life, that they be not too soon assisted in the attainment of salvation, but be slowly brought thereto after they have had experience of much evil. For as physicians, though they might quickly cure a man, will adopt the opposite of remedial measures whenever they suspect lurking mischief, because by so doing they mean to make the cure more permanent, and think it better to keep the patient for a long time in feverishness and sickness, so that he may make a sounder recovery, than that he should soon seem to pick up strength, but suffer a relapse, and the too hasty cure prove to be only temporary: so God also, knowing the secrets of the heart and having foreknowledge of the future, in His long-suffering perhaps lets things take their course, and by means of outward circumstances draws forth the secret evil, in order to |150 cleanse him, who through neglect, has harboured the seeds of sin; so that a man having vomited them when they have come to the surface, even if he be far gone in wickedness, may afterwards find strength when he has been cleansed from his wickness and been renewed. For God governs the souls of men, not, if I may so speak, according to the scale of an earthly life of fifty years, but by the measure of eternity; for He has made the intellectual nature incorruptible and akin to Himself; and the rational soul is not debarred of healing, as if this present life were all.