Concerning the justice of works, the treatment is twofold.
Do not be zealous for etc. Here he exhorts to the justice of works, and first by reasons taken from the side of creation; second, from the side of retribution, at: For justice etc.
From the side of creation, first by a reason taken from the goodness of the Creator: For God; second by a reason taken from the side of the end of creation: He created; third by a reason taken from the side of the condition of the creature: There is not in them.
(Verse 12). Do not be zealous for etc., as if to say: because lying kills, do not be zealous for, that is, do not love or desire with affection, death, namely of the soul, which one incurs through fault, according to that saying of Augustine: "True death is that which men do not fear: namely the separation of the soul from God, who is the blessed life of souls, just as bodily death is the separation of the body from the soul." Death, I say, causally established in the error of your lives, according to that passage of Proverbs fourteen: "They err who work evil"; for every wicked person is in error, according to the Philosopher. Nor acquire, in effect, perdition, of eternal punishment, which is in our power, according to that passage of Hosea thirteen: "Your destruction, O Israel; only your help is from me." By the works of your hands, causally, that is, by the merit of your works.
But it is objected that, according to Augustine, all desire life and beatitude: therefore no one desires death or perdition.
It must be said that this is true per se: but per accidens and consequently those are said to desire it who desire the act that is the cause of death and perdition. Whence he posits the consequent for the antecedent, adding: I rightly said that error is the cause of death, and evil works the cause of perdition.
(Verse 13). For God, who is the author of all things, according to that saying in John 1: "All things were made through him"; did not make death, namely present death.
But against this: Ecclesiasticus 11: "Life and death, poverty and honor are from God."
It must be said that here he speaks of the death of fault: or if of the death of nature, he speaks with respect to privation, not with respect to the sense of pain. Concerning the death of hell also, with respect to the punishment of loss, what is said here is true: God did not make death.
But against this: Every punishment is just, and everything just is good, and everything good is from God.
It must be said that when it is said: every punishment is just, this is understood per se, namely insofar as it is punishment, not according to what it is: whence it cannot be concluded that it is simply from God, but insofar as it is punishment.
Nor does he rejoice in the perdition of the living, namely their future perdition.
Against this: Proverbs 1: "I also will laugh at your destruction," etc.
It must be said that he does not delight in punishment insofar as it is the perdition of nature, but insofar as it is the effect of justice: whence Isaiah 1: "Ah! I will be consoled over my enemies, and I will be avenged upon my foes." And I rightly said that he does not delight or rejoice in perdition, which is the way to non-being.
(Verse 14). For he created, Genesis 1, all things that they might exist: The Gloss: "Not that they might perish": whence he also implanted in all things a natural appetite for existing, that is, gave it inwardly. And because "it is a common conception of the mind, according to Boethius, that everything which exists tends toward the good," and all things tend toward being: he proves that the being of all things is good. And healable, that is, created in spiritual health through innocence and reducible to health through penance, lest they perish: for he does not "will the death of the sinner," etc. Healable, I say, he made the nations of the world, that is, all who are born in the world. Their incurability therefore is from themselves, not from God: Jeremiah 30: "Your fracture is incurable, your wound is grievous."
For there is not in them: The Gloss: "In the nature of those," namely of the nations, a medicine of destruction, "that is, the cup of sin," according to the Gloss, which is the cause of destruction in present death: Baruch 3: "They were destroyed and descended to the underworld." Destruction is called sin, because it places one outside the boundaries of grace: likewise, temporal death, because it places one outside the boundary of natural life: likewise, the death of hell, because it places one outside the boundaries of glory: and he speaks by antiphrasis, as if poison were called a medicine, and as a fishpond is the name for water lacking fish.
But an objection is raised against what he says: There is not in them etc., because Ephesians 2: "We were by nature children of wrath."
But it must be said that here he speaks of actual sin, or of nature as established, that is, before the fall, not deprived through sin, of which the Apostle speaks.
Nor the kingdom of the underworld, that is, eternal perdition, on earth, that is, in man made from the earth: Genesis 2: "God formed man from the slime of the earth." He intends therefore to show that the death of sin and the perdition of eternal punishment are not from nature, but from a perverse will. Concerning the death of sin, this is clear from the Gloss, which says: "We do not sin by necessity, but by a perverse will"; concerning the perdition of punishment, this is clear from another Gloss, which says: "The devil would have harmed man in nothing, had man not consented."
For justice is perpetual etc. Here he admonishes toward justice of work from the consideration of retribution: and first he touches upon the reward of justice: second, the punishment of injustice: But injustice etc.; third, the equity of the punishment or penalty inflicted: But the ungodly etc.
(Verse 15). For justice is perpetual etc.; as if to say: I rightly said that death is not from God nor from nature, but from the injustice of a perverse will. For justice is perpetual, by bestowing eternal life, according to that passage in Proverbs 12: "In the paths of justice is life." And immortal, by liberating from perpetual death; whence below in chapter 3: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them."
But injustice is the acquisition of death, namely both of temporal and eternal death: whence Romans 6: "The wages of sin is death"; likewise Proverbs 12: "The wayward path leads to death."
But the ungodly etc. Here he shows the equity of retribution, because namely the ungodly merited this, first, by doing injustice, on account of which he says: But the ungodly with hands etc.: second, by loving it familiarly, there: And esteeming etc.: third, by inseparably adhering to it: And covenants etc.: fourth, by strongly defending it: Because they are worthy of death etc.
(Verse 16.). But the ungodly etc. I have rightly said that death is not from God, nor from nature: but, for however: the ungodly, against God and neighbor: with hands and words, Gloss: "By deeds and sayings"; they summoned it, as if to say: it did not impose itself, but they themselves called it forth, namely ungodliness and death, as is evident in the first parents, Genesis 3.
And esteeming it a friend, that is, useful and not harmful: Gloss: "Because they think they sin with impunity"; they melted away, that is, they flowed downward, Gloss: "into eternal death"; but first, into the death of guilt, second, into the death of temporal punishment, third, into the death of eternal punishment; Hebrews 2: "We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest perhaps we drift away." And they made a covenant with it, that is, an inseparable pact as of betrothal through the impenitence of obstinacy; Gloss: "Lest they be separated"; Isaiah 28: "We have struck a covenant with death, and with hell we have made a pact."