On the Trinity 5

Even if we read of his wrath, and have certain indignations of his described, and know of hatreds reported of him, we do not understand these to have been reported after the pattern of human vices. For all these things, though they can corrupt man, cannot in any way impair the divine power. Such passions will rightly be said to be in men, but will not rightly be judged to be in God. For man can be corrupted by them, because he can be corrupted; God cannot be corrupted by them, because he cannot be corrupted at all. These things, then, have their own force to exert, but where passible matter is present, not where impassible substance is present. For the fact that God is angry does not come from any fault in him; he does it for our healing. For he is merciful even when he threatens, since by these things men are called back to what is right. For those who lack reason for an honorable life need fear, so that those who have abandoned reason may at least be moved by terror. And therefore all these wraths of God, or hatreds, or whatever else is of this kind, since they are put forward for our healing (as the facts show), have come from design, not from fault, and do not come down from weakness; and for that reason they can have no power to corrupt God. For the diversity of the materials of which we are made commonly stirs up in us the discord of anger, which corrupts us; this cannot be in God, either from nature or from fault, since he is certainly not understood to be built up from bodily parts joined together. For he is simple, and without any bodily compounding; whatever that is which he alone knows himself to be, he is wholly that, since he has been called Spirit. And therefore those things which in men are faulty and corrupting, since men are angered through the corruptibility of the body itself and of matter, cannot exert the force of corruptibility in God, since, as we have said, they have come not from fault but from reason.