Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
TO SIMPLICIAN— ON VARIOUS QUESTIONS 403 heart he believed unto righteousness, and with the mouth he made confession unto salvation. For this merit he was told immediately: "To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise." Good works would have followed if after receiving grace he had continued to live for a time among men. They certainly did not precede so that he might have merited that grace, for he had been crucified as a robber, and from the cross was translated to paradise. "And as Isaiah had prophesied. Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had become as Sodom, and had been made like unto Gomorrah." "Had left us a seed" in this passage is equivalent to "a remnant shall be saved" in the other. For the rest perished as a due punishment, being vessels of perdition. That all did not perish as in Sodom and Gomorrah is due not to any merit of their own but to the grace of God that left a seed from which should spring another harvest throughout the whole earth. So he writes a little later. "Even so then at this present time a remnant is saved by the election of grace. But if it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. What then? That which Israel sought he did not obtain; but the election obtained it, and the rest were blinded" (Rom.
11:5 ff.). The vessels of mercy obtained it and the vessels of wrath were blinded. Yet all were of the same lump as in the fulness of the Gentiles.
20. There is a certain passage of Scripture which is highly relevant to the matter we are dealing with, and which wonderfully confirms what I have been urging. It is in the book which some call Jesus Sirach and others Ecclesiasticus. There it is written: "All men are from the ground, and Adam was created of earth. In the abundance of his discipline the Lord separated them and changed their ways. Some of them he blessed and exalted. Some he sanctified and brought nigh to himself Some of them he cursed and brought low, and turned them to their dissensions. As the clay is in the potter's hand to form and fashion it, and all his ways are according to his good pleasure, so is man in the hand of him that made him, and he will render to him according to his judgment. Good is set over against evil, and life over against death. So is the sinner over against the godly. Thus look upon all the works of the most High, two and two, one against another" (Ecclesiasticus 33:10 ff.). First God's discipline is commended. "In the abundance of his discipline God separated them"—from what if not from the blessedness of paradise. "And he changed their ways"—that they might now live as mortals. Then, of all was formed one mass coming from