. . .
God added to this narrative of events
when He said: ‘the cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is multiplied and their sin is
become exceedingly grievous.’ The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is multiplied, He
said. Well did He say that sins can cry out? It is because God says His ears
are assaulted by the cries of our sins that the punishment of sinners be not
delayed. Truly it is a cry and the cry is great when the love of God is
overpowered by the cries of sins to the extent that He is forced to punish the
sinners. The Lord shows how unwilling He is to punish even the gravest sinners,
when He said that the cry of Sodom ascended to Him. This means: My mercy urges
Me to spare them, but the cry of their sins compels Me to punish them. When He
had said this, what followed? Angels were sent with messages to Sodom. They
sent out and entered the city, where they were treated well by the good and
abused by the wicked. The wicked were blinded; the good were saved. Lot, with
tender care, was led out of the good were saved. Lot, with tender care, and led
out of the city, which was burned with its evil inhabitants. At this point I
ask whether He burned the evil with or without passing judgment? He who says God
punished the Sodomites without passing judgment asserts that God is unjust; if,
on the other hand, He destroyed the wicked after passing judgment is, as it
were, a likeness of the Judgment that is to come, for it is well known that
hell will be a flaming mass for the future punishment of the wicked, just as
flames from heaven destroyed Sodom and its neighboring cities.
In the present instance, God wished to
proclaim the Judgment that is to come when He sent fiery death from heaven upon
a wicked people, just as the Apostle also says that God by overthrowing the cities
of Sodom and Gomorrha condemned them, thereby setting an example for those who
will live wicked lives. However, His act in that instance possessed punishment
was due to His mercy; that He at last punished them, to His justice. When God
sent His angels to Sodom, the wicked. This was certainly for the purpose that,
when we see how excessive were their crimes, how infamous their vices and how
obscene their lusts, God could thereby prove to us that He was unwilling to
destroy them. They themselves compelled their own destruction. (Salvian, The
Governance of God, Book 1, 8, 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], 43-44)