On Patience

Contents

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–25

1. 1God is called patient because he waits for sinners to be corrected, though his impassible nature suffers nothing; Augustine turns to human patience.
2. 2True patience bears evils with an even mind so as not to abandon the good, and so escapes worse evils and gains eternal glory.
3. 3People endure great hardships most patiently for riches, honours, and amusements, and are even praised for it.
4. 4Criminals such as Catiline and robbers also endure much, but that is hardness, not patience, which serves wisdom and a good conscience.
5. 5Patience is judged by the cause of the suffering: only those who suffer rightly have true patience.
6. 6If people bear so much for temporal things and bodily health, the soul should bear far more under persecution for its own salvation.
7. 7Bodily suffering borne patiently for righteousness also serves the body, which will rise whole and incorruptible.
8. 8Patience is exercised in the mind alone, as by David under insult and Christ toward Judas, or in bodily suffering for righteousness, as by the martyrs in both ways.
9. 9Job, attacked secretly by the devil through loss of goods and children, bodily torment, his wife, and his friends, kept patience throughout.
10. 10Against those who kill themselves and claim the glory of martyrs, Augustine argues from Job that suicide destroys patience and is worse than parricide, even under persecution.
11. 11Scripture teaches patience under trial and discipline, by which we return to the paradise we lost through appetite for pleasure.
12. 12True patience is not from the powers of free will, as some proudly hold, but is God's gift to the poor in spirit.
13. 13Augustine states his opponents' objection: if the wicked can endure so much by free will alone, why cannot the righteous?
14. 14The wicked endure much from desire for the world, which comes from their own will; the righteous endure from the love of God, which the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts.
15. 15Since God is love, the love of God cannot be had without God; it is through him, not ourselves, that the saints conquer in persecution.
16. 16The will that loves the world is itself “from the world”; even the apostles were of the world until Christ chose them out of it.
17. 17Election is by grace, which precedes all merit and even faith; the apostles were chosen out of the world not because they were righteous but to be made righteous.
18. 18The righteous of the Old Testament were also justified by faith in the Christ to come and by prevenient mercy; God's choice and love always come first.
19. 19Without God's prior free choice and love a person is unrighteous; God hates sinners as a physician hates sickness while loving the patient.
20. 20Patience comes from the same giver as love; the endurance of worldly desire is a numbness of disease, not health.
21. 21An evil will needs no demon to prompt it, as the devil's own fall shows; it endures much for created goods whose pleasure it knows.
22. 22Love of God, and so true patience, can only be given by God; Scripture calls patience his gift.
23. 23A schismatic who suffers rather than deny Christ is not to be blamed; his patience is praiseworthy and may lighten his judgement, though without love it does not gain the kingdom.
24. 24Augustine asks whether the patience of a schismatic who suffers for the truth he retains is God's gift, since both answers seem to raise difficulties.
25. 25Schismatics may receive some gifts of God, like the gifts Abraham gave the sons of his concubines, but not the inheritance; the patience of Christ's poor heirs will bear eternal fruit.