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The peace of the body then consists in the duly proportioned
arrangement of its parts. The petite of the irrational soul is the
harmonious repose of the appetites, and that of the rational soul the
harmony of knowledge and action. The peace of body and soul is the
well-ordered and harmonious life and health of the living creature.
Peace between man and God is the well-ordered obedience of faith to
eternal law. Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord.
Domestic peace is the well-ordered concord between those of the family
who rule and those who obey. Civil peace is a similar concord among
the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered
and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The
peace of all things is the tranquillity of order. Order is the
distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own
place. And hence, though the miserable, in so far as they are such,
do certainly not enjoy peace, but are severed from that tranquillity of
order in which there is no disturbance, nevertheless, inasmuch as they
are deservedly and justly, miserable, they are by their very misery
connected with order. They are not, indeed, conjoined with the
blessed, but they are disjoined from them by the law of order. And
though they are disquieted, their circumstances are notwithstanding
adjusted to them, and consequently they have some tranquillity of
order, and therefore some peace. But they are wretched because,
although not wholly miserable, they are not in that place where any
mixture of misery is impossible. They would, however, be more
wretched if they had not that peace which arises from being in harmony
with the natural order of things. When they suffer, their peace is in
so far disturbed; but their peace continues in so far as they do not
suffer, and in so far as their nature continues to exist. As, then,
there may be life without pain, while there cannot be pain without some
kind of life, so there may be peace without war, but there cannot be
war without some kind of peace, because war supposes the existence of
some natures to wage it, and these natures cannot exist without peace
of one kind or other.
And therefore there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot
exist; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence
not even the nature of the devil himself is evil, in so far as it is
nature, but it was made evil by being perverted. Thus he did not
abide in the truth, but could not escape the judgment of the Truth;
he did not abide in the tranquillity of order, but did not therefore
escape the power of the Ordainer. The good imparted by God to his
nature did not screen him from the justice of God by which order was
preserved in his punishment; neither did God punish the good which He
had created, but the evil which the devil had committed. God did not
take back all He had imparted to his nature, but something He took
and something He left, that there might remain enough to be sensible
of the loss of what was taken. And this very sensibility to pain is
evidence of the good which has been taken away and the good which has
been left. For, were nothing good left, there could be no pain on
account of the good which had been lost. For he who sins is still
worse if he rejoices in his loss of righteousness. But he who is in
pain, if he derives no benefit from it, mourns at least the loss of
health. And as righteousness and health are both good things, and as
the loss of any good thing is matter of grief, not of joy, if, at
least, there is no compensation, as spiritual righteousness may
compensate for the loss of bodily health, certainly it is more suitable
for a wicked man to grieve in punishment than to rejoice in his fault.
As, then, the joy of a sinner who has abandoned what is good is
evidence of a bad will, so his grief for the good he has lost when he
is punished is evidence of a good nature. For he who laments the peace
his nature has lost is stirred to do so by some relics of peace which
make his nature friendly to itself. And it is very just that in the
final punishment the wicked and godless should in anguish bewail the
loss of the natural advantages they enjoyed, and should perceive that
they were most justly taken from them by that God whose benign
liberality they had despised. God, then, the most wise Creator and
most just Ordainer of all natures, who placed the human race upon
earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men some good things
adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in
this life from health and safety and human fellowship, and all things
needful for the preservation and recovery of this peace, such as the
objects which are accommodated to our outward senses, light, night,
the air, and waters suitable for us, and everything the body requires
to sustain, shelter, heal, or beautify it: and all under this most
equitable condition. that every man who made a good use of these
advantages suited to the peace of this mortal condition, should receive
ampler and better blessings, namely, the peace of immortality,
accompanied by glory and honor in an endless life made fit for the
enjoyment of God and of one another in God; but that he who used the
present blessings badly should both lose them and should not receive the
others.
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