{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"62ab762a4cc488fa35fc319ff2babfbbb89ddab9bf5fdceee5efc4926c6ed53d","edition_title":"The City of God, Volume I","edition_translators":["Marcus Dods","George Wilson (Book IV)","J. J. Smith (Books V-VIII)"],"edition_year":1871,"explicit_reference_candidates":[],"headings":["THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE,","BOOK FIRST."],"id":"pg45304-paragraph-45","license_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html","note_targets":[],"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"original-paragraph-unclassified","review_required":["work and recension attribution","original-work chronology","Bible reference numbering and citation kind","English edition rights and attribution"],"review_status":"needs_review","rights_evidence":"Provider catalog reports public domain in the USA. Original transcription title leaves state T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1871; printed translator allocation retained. Gutenberg credits Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries without an exact scan identifier. Full provider license preserved with acquired original; republication and per-work metadata remain unreviewed.","source_anchor":null,"source_ebook":45304,"source_html":"<p>What, then, have the Christians suffered in that calamitous\r\nperiod, which would not profit every one who duly and faithfully\r\nconsidered the following circumstances? First of all, they\r\nmust humbly consider those very sins which have provoked God\r\nto fill the world with such terrible disasters; for although they be\r\nfar from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet\r\nthey do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults\r\nas to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills. For<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_12\">[Pg 12]</a></span>\r\nevery man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points\r\nto the lust of the flesh. Though he do not fall into gross enormity\r\nof wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable\r\nprofanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so\r\nmuch the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.\r\nBut not to mention this, where can we readily find a man who\r\nholds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of\r\nwhose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities\r\nand impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions\r\nthreatened? Where is the man who lives with them in the\r\nstyle in which it becomes us to live with them? For often\r\nwe wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and\r\nadmonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding\r\nthem, either because we shrink from the labour or are\r\nashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships,\r\nlest this should stand in the way of our advancement,\r\nor injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous\r\ndisposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from\r\nlosing. So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful\r\nto the good, and therefore they do not fall with them\r\ninto that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons,\r\nyet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore,\r\neven though their own sins be slight and venial, they are\r\njustly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity\r\nthey quite escape punishment. Justly, when God afflicts\r\nthem in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter,\r\nthrough love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to\r\nthese sinners.</p>","source_sha256":"d89e9a2b80bb59f394f0fb1bf313b39fab162f06af6642166d62c5912c1195f1","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html","text_sha256":"4308dbc9c792c385479c8a97dda652b452bc4c09fab7fdda8e9ea2a1cbbb8b8c","verified":false,"work_id":null}