Marriage and Virginity
forgives. Sinners have been harmed by their wrongdoing; he comes to their aid and heals their infirmity. His people's enemies rage; from their cruelty he produces martyrs. In the end he even condemns those he judges to be deserving of damnation; although they suffer their evil, what he does is good. It cannot but be good, because it is just; beyond question, just as sin is unjust, so the punishment of sin is just.
16. God did not lack the power to make human beings who could not sin; but he preferred to make them with the power to sin if they chose to, and not to sin if they chose not to. He forbade the one and commanded the other, and so at first they would have the benefit of the merit in not sinning and afterward the just reward of not being able to sin. In the end he is going to make his saints absolutely incapable of sinning.†12 He already has his angels like that, and in loving them in him we have no fear that any of them will become a devil by sinning. We do not take this to be true of any good person in this mortal life. We are confident, however, that everyone will be like that in that eternal life. If the omnipotent God causes good to result even from our evils, what benefits will he bestow when he has set us free from everything bad? There is much that could be discussed more fully and more precisely about using evil for good; but that is not the subject of this discussion and we must avoid making it too lengthy.
Continence Must Be Joined to Justice
7, 17. Let us return now to the reason why we said these things. We need continence, and we know it is a gift from God, to keep our heart from lapsing into malicious talk to make excuses for sins. Is there any sin we shall not have the necessary continence to restrain ourselves from committing, when it even restrains us from the sin of defending sin with wicked pride if it is committed? We therefore have a general need for continence, to turn away from evil. Doing good, however, seems to belong to another virtue, namely justice. The holy psalm tells us this, where we read: Turn away from wrong and do good. It goes on, however, to state what our purpose is in doing this: Look for peace and follow it (Ps 34:14). We will have perfect peace when our being holds fast to its creator and there is nothing in us that fights against us. This, as I see it, is what the savior himself meant when he said, Let your loins be girt, and your lamps burning (Lk 12:35). What does it mean to have one's loins girt? To restrain lust, and that has to do with continence. To have lamps burning, however, is to shine and glow