Ezequiel 14
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Ezequiel 14:7
Those dissatisfied with any facet of your creation are unsound in mind, as I was when many things that you made displeased me. Because my soul did not dare to be dissatisfied with my God, it would not identify as yours whatever dissatisfied it. In this way it had strayed into a belief in two substances, and it got no rest but recounted the opinions of others. Recoiling from that error, it had made for itself a god inhabiting the boundless area of all space, and it had considered that god to be you, and had "set it in its heart" and had become again the shrine of its idol, deserving of your loathing. But after you stroked my ignorant head and closed my eyes so that they should not see vanity, I retired from myself a little, and my madness was lulled to sleep. I awoke in you and saw you infinite in a different way, and that vision was not with the eyes of the flesh. — Confessions 7.14.20
Ezequiel 14:9
It is quite clear that God works in people's hearts to incline their wills to whatsoever way he wills: either to good in accordance with his mercy or to evil in accordance with their evil merits, and this, indeed, by his own judgments, sometimes manifest, sometimes hidden, but always just. You must keep this conviction firm and unshaken in your heart that in God there is no injustice. Accordingly, when you read the truth of the Scriptures and find that people are led astray by God or that their hearts are dulled and hardened by him, have no doubt that it was their previous evil merits that made them suffer their just penalties. — ON GRACE AND FREE WILL 21:43
Ezequiel 14:9
You must believe that there were evil merits in that person whom God permits to go astray and to become hardened. But for the person on whom he has mercy, you must acknowledge with an unswerving faith that this is a case of the grace of God who is not rendering evil for evil but good for evil. — ON GRACE AND FREE WILL 23:45
Ezequiel 14:9
Which of the two, patience or power, do you find in the words of Scripture? Whichever you choose, even if you admit both, you must surely see that the false speech of this prophet is both sin and punishment for sin. Will you also say that the words, "I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet," should be interpreted as though God deserted him that he might be deceived in return for past misdeeds and thus err? Say what you will, he was punished for sin in such a way that he sinned prophesying something false. — AGAINST JULIAN 5:3.13
Ezequiel 14:14
Daniel is unique in being included among the three just men whom God says he will deliver, doubtless showing three special types of just people, when he says he will so deliver them as not to deliver their children with them, but they only shall be delivered: namely, Noah, Daniel and Job. — LETTERS 111
Ezequiel 14:14
Now I suppose it is not easy to find in God's Scripture so weighty a testimony of holiness given of any one as what is written of his three servants, Noah, Daniel and Job, whom the prophet Ezekiel describes as the only men able to be delivered from God's impending wrath. In these three men he no doubt prefigures three kinds of people to be delivered: in Noah, I suppose, are represented righteous leaders of nations, by reason of his government of the ark as a type of the church; in Daniel, people who are righteous in continence; in Job, those who are righteous in wedlock—to say nothing of any other view of the passage, which it is unnecessary now to consider. It is, at any rate, clear from this testimony of the prophet, and from other inspired statements, how eminent were these worthies in righteousness. — ON THE MERITS AND FORGIVENESS OF SINS AND ON INFANT BAPTISM 2:12.10