§ 1.
Both here therefore and there is the same righteousness of God in maintaining God’s cause.1 There indeed it is done typically, and for a certain time, and with comparative moderation, but here truly, and for ever, and more severely. For the fire is eternal; and the anger of God which shall be revealed from Heaven from the Countenance of our Lord brings a greater penalty on those who incur it:2 as David also saith, But the countenance of the Lord is upon them that do evil, to destroy the memory of them from the earth. This being so, the Elders used to declare those persons to be very senseless, who upon what befel God’s disobedient people of old try to bring in another Father: objecting the great things which the Lord when He came had done to save those who received Him, in His pity for them; but saying nothing of His judgment and of all that is to happen to such as have heard His Words and not done them;3 and how it were good for them if they had not been born:4 and how it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment than for that city which received not the words of His Disciples.
§ 2.
For as in the New Testament the faith of men towards God is amplified, receiving as an additional object5 the Son of God, that man may even become partaker of God: so is the exactness also of his behaviour amplified, in that we are bidden to abstain not only from evil deeds, but from the very thoughts, and from idle words, and empty discourses, and scurrilous sayings. So again the punishment of such as believe not the Word of God, and despise His coming and turn backward, is extended: in that it is made not only temporal, but likewise eternal. For to whomsoever the Lord shall say, Depart from Me,6 ye oursed, into perpetual fire,—those will be for ever condemned: and to whomsoever He shall say, Come, ye blessed of My Father,7 receive the inheritance of the Kingdom which is prepared for you for ever, these receive the Kingdom, and go on profiting for ever; there being one and the same God the Father, and His Word, always present with mankind, though His arrangements be various, and His doings many: who both saves from the beginning those who are saved (for they are such as love God, and in their several kinds follow the Word of God), and passes judgment on those who are judged, on such, I mean, as forget God, and are blasphemers and transgressors of His Word.
§ 3.
And in fact these very heretics,8 whom we have before mentioned, have forgotten themselves: accusing the Lord, in whom they say they believe. For what things they stigmatize in God, in His temporal judgment at that time on the unbelieving—how He smote the Egyptians, and saved the obedient:—these same will fall back on our Lord just as much, in His judging, and that for ever, those whom He judges, and forgiving for ever those whom He forgives; and it will be found, according to their way of speaking, that He became the cause of extreme sin to those who laid hands on Him and pierced Him. For, had He not so come, of course they had not become the murderers of their Lord; and had He not sent Prophets to them, they had not of course killed them; and Apostles too in like manner.
Those therefore who cast in our teeth and say, God could not save His people without the Egyptians being smitten, and drowned in the sea as they were following after Israel:—will be met by this answer: We then could not be saved, without the Jews becoming murderers of the Lord (which was to themselves the loss of eternal life); nor without their slaying the Apostles and persecuting the Church, and so falling into the abyss of wrath. For as they by the Egyptians’, so we too by the Jews’ blindness have received salvation; the Lord’s death being surely the condemnation of those who crucified Him, and believed not His coming, but the salvation of such as believe in Him. And so the Apostle speaks in the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians,9 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, both in them that are saved and in them that perish; to some indeed a savour of death unto death, and unto some a savour of life unto life. To whom then is He a savour of death unto death, but to those who believe not, and are not subject to the Word of God?
And who are those who in that other time also gave themselves over unto death? Those of course who believe not, and are not subject to God. And again; Who are saved, and have received their inheritance? Those surely who believe God, and keep their love towards Him; as Caleb the son of Jephone, and Jesus the son of Nave, and the harmless children, who had no thought even of wickedness. Who again in our case are those who are saved, and who receive eternal life? Is it not the lovers of God, and believers of His promises, and such as have become children in malice?