Ver. 4.—'Their heart hast thou set far from discipline.' 36. God makes the heart of the wicked to be far from discipline only by permitting it.—For if they had kept the custody of discipline, and had by no means despised the precepts of our Redeemer, the very mortality of their flesh would have roused them to the love of immortal life. For this very thing, that we are in this life subject to corruption, already belongs to the scourge of discipline. For to be troubled by heat and cold, by hunger and thirst, to be afflicted with diseases, and at length even to be extinguished—what are these but the scourges of sin? But there are some who both endure the scourges, and yet by no means reform their mind to the fear of him who scourges. Whence it is now rightly said: 'Their heart hast thou set far from discipline.'
For although the body is under discipline, the heart is not under discipline, while a man is both scourged and yet not brought back to humility of mind. Nor is this said as if the almighty and merciful God set the heart of man far from discipline, but that he by his judgment permits it, having fallen away of its own accord, to remain where it fell—just as we also say to him in prayer: 'And lead us not into temptation' (Matt. vi, 13); that is, permit us by no means to be led. There follows: