not will, in case anybody should consider it was very rash of me to say that the
152 SAINT A UG USTINE - SERMONS he does not wish, he will himself do with them what he does wish. In no way, therefore, do they either change or defeat the will of the Almighty; because whether a person is justly damned or mercifully delivered, the will of the Almighty is fulfilled. So it is only what the Almighty does not will that he cannot do.9 So he makes use of bad people in accordance, not with their warped will, but with his straight and true will. Because just as bad people make bad use of their good nature,10 that is of his good work, so he being good makes good use even of their bad works, lest the will of the Almighty should be in any respect thwarted.
You see, if he being good had no means of making just and good use of bad people, he would in no way allow them either to be bom or to live; he did not himself make them bad, because what he made them was human; because what he created was their natures, not their sins which are against nature.11 However, with his foreknowledge he could not be unaware that they were going to turn out bad. But just as he knew the bad things they were going to do, so he also knew the good things he was going to do with them.
Who could find the words to explain, or the praises to do justice to the immeasurable good conferred on us by the passion of the savior, in which his blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins? And yet this stupendous good was achieved through the malice of the devil, through the malice of the Jews, through the malice of the traitor Judas. Nor does justice require that they should be rewarded for the good that God, not they, has conferred through them on the human race; rather it is just that punishment should be meted out to them, since their will was to do harm.
But just as we have been able to find a case which would be manifest even to us, of how God has made good use even of the bad works of the devil and the Jews and the traitor Judas for our redemption and salvation, so too in the hidden and secret recesses of the whole of creation, which neither our eyes nor our minds are sharp enough to penetrate, God knows how he makes good use of the bad, so that in everything that comes to be and is accomplished in the world the will of the Almighty may be fulfilled.
The Almighty cannot do what he does not will
4. But as I said that the only thing the Almighty cannot do is what he does not will, in case anybody should consider it was very rash of me to say that the Almighty cannot do something, the blessed apostle said it too: If we do not believe, he remains faithful, he cannot deny himself (2 Tm 2:13). But it is because he does not wish to that he cannot do it, because he cannot even have the will to. Justice, after all, cannot have the will to do what is unjust, or wisdom will what is foolish, or truth will what is false.
Thus we are advised that almighty God not only, as the apostle says, cannot deny himself, but cannot do many things as well. Here am I saying it, and it's by his truth I dare to say what I dare not deny: almighty God cannot die, cannot change, cannot be deceived or mistaken, cannot be miserable, cannot be de-