Jerome : Mighty is the wrath of the Lord when he is not angry with us here, for, then, he reserves us like a calf for slaughter. In fact, he says to Jerusalem, "Many are your sins and many your iniquities, but I will not be vexed with you." In other words, when you were only an adulteress, I loved you with a jealous love; but when you had many lovers, I despised you, and I will not be vexed with you. In this same way, a man is jealous of his wife when he loves her; but if he is not jealous, he hates her and does not imitate the words of him who says, "I will punish their crime with a rod" but, "I will not punish your daughters for their harlotry." — HOMILIES ON THE Psalms 51 (Psalms 140) Jerome : It is when God shows no anger to sinners that his anger is great. So in the case of Ezekiel he said to Jerusalem, "Now I shall not be angry with you, my jealousy has left you." … So that I may not go too far and overrun the length of a letter by piling up instances from the Old Testament, I shall tell you a brief story that happened in the days of my childhood. When the blessed Antony was summoned by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, to the city of Alexandria to confute heretics, and Didymus, a most learned and blessed man, had a meeting with him, they had a discussion about the holy Scriptures. Antony admired the other's brain and praised his mental sharpness. Then he asked, "I imagine that your blindness does not depress you?" Didymus in his shame said nothing. But when Antony asked a second and third time, he finally succeeded in eliciting from Didymus a simple expression of grief. Antony said to him, "I am surprised at a wise man grieving at the loss of what ants, flies and gnats have rather than rejoicing at having what only the saints and apostles have deserved to get." From this you can realize that it is much better to see with the spirit than with the flesh and to possess the eyes that the mote of sin cannot enter. — LETTER 68 John Cassian : Like a skillful physician, who has tried all saving cures and sees there is no remedy left which can be applied to their disease, the Lord is, as it were, overcome by their iniquities and is obliged to desist from his kindly chastisement. And so he denounces them saying: "I will no longer be angry with you, and my jealousy has departed from you." — Conference 6:11 Origen of Alexandria : If you do not recover your senses when you have been chastised, if you are not corrected when you have been reproved, if you despise when you are beaten, you must realize that if you go on continually sinning his jealousy will depart from you and that which is said to Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel will be said to you: "Therefore my jealousy will depart from you, and I will no longer be angry with you." Behold the mercy and piety of the good God.… This is terrible! This is the end when we are no longer reproached for sins, when we offend and are no longer corrected. For then, when we have exceeded the measure of sinning "the jealous God" turns his jealousy away from us, as he said above, or my jealousy will be removed from you, and I will no longer be angry over you. — HOMILIES ON Exodus 8:5