Those Who Sinned Before the Flood Were Justly Punished

So we see that from the beginning God created everything perfect. Nothing would have needed to be added to his original arrangement, as if it were shortsighted and imperfect, if everything had continued in the state and condition in which he created it. And therefore, in the case of those who sinned before the law and even before the flood, we see that God visited them with a righteous judgment, because they deserved to be punished without any excuse, for having broken the law of nature. Nor should we fall into the blasphemous slanders of those who do not know this reason, and so belittle the God of the Old Testament and run down our faith, saying with a sneer: “Why, then, did it please your God to publish the law after so many thousands of years, while he let such long ages pass without any law? But if he afterward discovered something better, then it appears that at the beginning of the world his wisdom was lesser and poorer, and that afterward, as if taught by experience, he began to provide for something better and to correct and improve his original arrangements.” Such a thing certainly cannot happen to the infinite foreknowledge of God, nor can the mad folly of heretics make these assertions about him without grievous blasphemy. As Ecclesiastes says: “I have learned that all the words that God has made from the beginning will continue forever; nothing can be added to them, and nothing can be taken away from them.” And therefore “the law is not made for the righteous, but for the unrighteous and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the wicked and profane.” [a]

For since they had the sound and complete system of natural laws planted in them, they had no need of this external law in addition, one committed to writing and given as an aid to that natural law. From this we infer by the clearest reasoning that the written law did not need to be given at the beginning, for it was unnecessary while the natural law still remained and had not been utterly violated. Nor could the perfection of the gospel have been granted before the law had been kept. For those people could not have listened to this saying, “If a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” who were not content to avenge the wrongs done to them with the even justice of the law of like for like, but repaid a very slight touch with deadly kicks and with wounds from weapons, and for a single tooth sought to take the life of those who had struck them. Nor could it be said to them, “Love your enemies,” among whom it was thought a great and most important thing if they loved their friends, and only kept away from their enemies and differed from them in hatred, without being eager to oppress and kill them.