On Patience 2

For us, the authority for practising patience is delegated not by a human affectation formed by the stupor of doglike indifference, but by the divine arrangement of a living and heavenly discipline, which shows God himself first of all as the example of patience: he who scatters the flower of this light equally over the just and the unjust; who allows the services of the seasons, the ministries of the elements, the tributes of all creation to come alike to the worthy and the unworthy; bearing with the most ungrateful nations, who worship the playthings of their arts and the works of their own hands, who persecute his name and his household; bearing with luxury, avarice, iniquity, and malice growing daily more insolent, so that by his patience he detracts from himself. For many do not believe in the Lord for this reason: because they have not known him angry with the world for so long a time.