The Essential Augustine (continued)
THREE LEVELS OF REALITY 51 portion to their fashion and appearance are things themselves good, nor could there be good things in a less or the least degree except from God, they are so ordered that the more infirm yield to the firmer, the weaker to the stronger, the more impotent to the more powerful; and so earthly things harmonize with celestial, as being subject to the things that are preeminent. But to things falling away, and succeeding, a certain temporal beauty in its kind belongs, so that neither those things that die, or cease to be what they were, degrade or disturb the fashion and appearance and order of the universal creation: as a speech well composed is assuredly beautiful, although in it all syllables and sounds rush past as it were in being born and in dying.
What sort of punishment, and how great, is due to 9. each fault, belongs to Divine judgment, not to human; which punishment assuredly when it is remitted in the case of the converted, there is great goodness on the part of God; and when it is deservedly inflicted, there is no injustice on the part of God; because nature is better ordered by justly smarting under punishment, than by rejoicing with impunity in sin; which nature nevertheless, even thus having some measure, form, and order, in whatever extremity ' there is as yet some good, which things, if they were absolutely taken away, and utterly consumed, there will be accordingly no good, because no nature will remain.
All corruptible natures therefore are natures at ail 10. only so far as they are from God, nor would they be corruptible if they were of Him; because they would be what He himself is. Therefore of whatever measure, of whatever form, of whatever order, they are, they are so because it is God by whom they were made; but they are not immutable, because it is nothing of which they were made. For it is sacrilegious audacity to make nothing and God equal, as when we wish to make what has been born of God such as what has been made by Him out of nothing.
Wherefore neither can God's nature suffer harm, nor 11. can any nature under God suffer harm unjustly: for when by sinning unjustly some do harm, an unjust will is imputed to them; but the power by which they are permitted to do harm is from God alone, who knows, while they themselves are ignorant, what they ought to suffer, whom He permits them to harm.