Never has it been known, in so many wars as are recorded from before the foundation of Rome to the present day, that an enemy, having reduced any city, should have spared those who had fled to the temples of their gods; not even the Romans themselves, whose moderation in victory has so often been justly praised, have respected the sanctuary of vanquished deities.  The devastation and massacre and pillage and conflagrations of the sack of Rome were nothing new.  But this one thing was new and unheard of—­these savages became suddenly so mild as to set apart spacious basilicas and to fill them with people on whom they had mercy; no one might be killed therein nor any dragged from thence.  Who does not see that this is due to the name of Christ and to a Christian age?  Who can deny that these sanguinary hordes were bridled by Him Who had said:  “I will visit their sins with the rod, but will not take my mercy from them”?

All natures, because they exist and therefore have their manner and species and a certain peace with themselves, are good; and when they are in the places belonging to the order of nature, they preserve the being which they have received.

The truest cause of the felicity of the good angels is to be found in this, that they adhere to Him Who supremely is; and the cause of the misery of bad angels lies in this, that they have turned away from Him Who supremely is, to themselves, who have not supreme being.  This vice has no other name but pride, which is the beginning of every sin.  They refused to preserve their strength for Him, and so threw away that in which all their greatness consisted.  It is vain to seek for an efficient cause for the bad will; we have to do, not with anything efficient, but with a deficiency.  The mere defection from that which supremely is to things which are on a lower grade of being is to begin to have a bad will.

Now God founded mankind, not as the angels, so that even did they sin they should not die; but in such a way that did they obey, they should enter, without death, on a blessed eternity; but, did they disobey, they should suffer the most just penalty, both of body and of soul.  For though the human soul is truly said to be immortal, yet is there a sense in which it dies when God forsakes it.

Only because they had begun inwardly to be evil did the first of mankind fall into overt disobedience.  A bad will had preceded the bad action, and of that bad will the beginning was pride, or the appetite for an inordinate rank.  To lift oneself up is in itself to be cast down and to fall.  Wherefore humility is most highly of all things commended in and to the City of God, and in Christ her King; but the contrary vice of arrogance especially rules her adversary, the devil, and this is unquestionably the great difference by which the two cities are divided, and the society of the pious from the society of the impious.  Thus two loves have founded two cities, the love of Self extending to contempt of God has made the City of the World; the love of God extending to contempt of Self has made the Heavenly City.