1. There are two kinds of injustice: one by which we inflict injuries, the other by which we neglect to ward off injuries inflicted by others when we are able to do so. For in a certain way we ourselves oppress the oppressed, when we are able to defend them and yet disdain to rescue them from their oppression. Nor does it profit me at all that I do not deceive or defraud anyone, if I permit another to be deceived or defrauded. The same may be understood concerning sins: for if I see a man sinning, and not only do not rebuke him but even consent to him in his sin, I make myself a sharer in his condemnation; and I sin in all sinners, when those whom I know to have sinned or to be sinning I do not, through a certain malice of a cruel mind, reprove.
Nor indeed should those be listened to who say that they cannot rebuke wrongdoers lest they make enemies of those who refuse to amend themselves. For while they spare the will of such men, they do not spare their salvation. But if we chastise them not out of vainglory but out of mercy, and with a certain compassion of a pitying heart, and they too perceive that we are no less moved by their sins than by our own, then either, being reformed into a good state, they give thanks to God together with us; or, if the sweetness of sinning still holds them in their sin, and, perceiving that their salvation is a care to us, they choose to render evil for good, then we ought rather to incur the enmities of those who refuse to be amended than, by flattering sinners, to incur the displeasure of God.
Seddehisquoniaminlibrosecundo (Cap. iet 2) plurajamdiximus, reliquasjustitiæpartes, utcœpimus, exsequamur.
But since we have already said much about these matters in the second book (chapters 1 and 2), let us, as we began, pursue the remaining parts of justice.