Chapter 25.—Of the Anger of God,
Which Does Not Inflame His Mind, Nor Disturb His Unchangeable
Tranquillity.
The anger of God is not a
disturbing emotion of His mind, but a judgment by which punishment
is inflicted upon sin. His thought and reconsideration also are
the unchangeable reason which changes things; for He does not, like
man, repent of anything He has done, because in all matters His
decision is as inflexible as His prescience is certain. But if
Scripture were not to use such expressions as the above, it would
not familiarly insinuate itself into the minds of all classes of
men, whom it seeks access to for their good, that it may alarm the
proud, arouse the careless, exercise the inquisitive, and satisfy
the intelligent; and this it could not do, did it not first stoop,
and in a manner descend, to them where they lie. But its
denouncing death on all the animals of earth and air is a
declaration of the vastness of the disaster that was approaching:
not that it threatens destruction to the irrational animals as if
they too had incurred it by sin.