(4) You see how the Scriptures prove
by divine witnesses that God judges not only by deeds and by examples, as I
have already said, but does so today by the very name and terms of judgment.
Perhaps you think that God performed special favors for a holy man by directly judging
his enemies. The day will fail me if I were to speak about His immediate
sentences and judgments in this world. But that you may clearly know His
censure and sacred considerations deal more with actions than with persons
themselves, hear how God, the judge, who many times gave sentences favorable to
his servant David, often gave decisions unfavorable to him. This happened in a transaction
which did not involve many men, or perhaps, what would have aroused God more,
in a transaction involving holy men. It happened in the instance of one man, a foreigner,
where the action rather than the person demanded punishment.
When Urias, the Hethite, a member of
the wicked race and of an unfriendly nation, had been killed, the Divine Word
was immediately passed to David: ‘You have killed Urias, the Hethite, with the sword
and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of
the children of Ammon. Therefore the sword shall never depart from our house. Thus
said the Lord, “Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of our own house;
and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. For
you did it secretly: but I will do this thing in the sight of all Israel and in
the sight of the sun.”’
What do you say to this, you who
believe that God does not judge our actions and who believe that He has no
concern whatsoever for us? Do you not see that the eyes of God were never
absent even from that secret sin through which David fell once? Learn from this
that you are always seem y Christ, understand and know that you will be punished,
and perhaps very soon, you, who perhaps in consolation for your sins, think
that our acts are not seen by God. You see that the holy Daivd was unable to
hide his sin in the secrecy of his inmost rooms; neither was he able to claim exemptions
from immediate punishment through the privilege of great deeds. What did the Lord
so to him? ‘I will take your wives before your eyes and the sword shall never
depart from your house.’
You see what instant judgment so great
a man suffered for one sin. Immediate condemnation followed the fault, a condemnation
immediately punishing and without reservation, stopping the guilty one then and
there and not deferring the case to a later date. Thus He did not say, ‘because
you have done this, know that the judgment of God will come and you will be
tormented in the fire of hell.’ Rather, He said, ‘You shall suffer immediate
torture and shall have the sword of divine severity at your throat.’
And what followed? The guilty man
acknowledged his sin, was humbled, filled with remorse, confessed and wept. He
repented and asked for pardon, gave up his royal jewels, laid aside his robes
of cloth of gold, put aside the purple, resigned his crown. He was changed in
body and appearance. He cast aside all his kingship with its ornaments. He put
on the externals of a fugitive penitent, so that his squalor was his defense.
He was wasted by fasting, dried up by thirst, worn from weeping and imprisoned
in his own loneliness. Yet this king, bearing such a great name, greater in his
holiness than in temporal power, surpassing all by the prerogative of his
antecedent merits, did not escape punishment though he sought pardon so earnestly.
The reward of
this penitence was such that he was not condemned to eternal punishment. Yet, he did not merit full pardon in
this world. What did the prophecy say to the
penitent? ‘Because you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to
blaspheme, the son that is born to you shall die.’ Besides the pain of the
bitter loss of his son, God wished that there be added to the very loving
father an understanding of this greatest punishment, namely, that the father
who mourned should himself bring death to his beloved son, when the son, born
of his father’s crime, was killed of the very crime that had begotten him. (Salvian,
The Governance of God, Book 2, 4, in Salvian: The Writings of Salvian the
Presbyter [trans. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan; The Fathers of the Church 3;
Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947], 61-63,
emphasis in bold added)