And Salvian desired to know the reason why the Lord had spoken that
word, and read his Bible till he found out, and wrote thereon his
book De Gubernatione Dei, of the government of God; and a very noble
book it is. He takes his stand on the ground of Scripture, with
which he shews an admirable acquaintance. The few good were
expecting the end of the world. Christ was coming to put an end to
all these horrors: but why did he delay his coming? The many weak
were crying that God had given up the world; that Christ had deserted
his Church, and delivered over Christians to the cruelties of heathen
and Arian barbarians. The many bad were openly blaspheming, throwing
off in despair all faith, all bonds of religion, all common decency,
and crying, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Salvian
answers them like an old Hebrew prophet: 'The Lord's arm is not
shortened. The Lord's eyes are not closed. The Lord is still as
near as ever. He is governing the world as He has always governed
it: by the everlasting moral laws, by which the wages of sin are
death. Your iniquities have withheld good things from you. You have
earned exactly what God has paid you. Yourselves are your own
punishment. You have been wicked men, and therefore weak men; your
own vices, and not the Goths, have been your true conquerors.' As I
said in my inaugural lecture--that is after all the true theory of
history. Men may forget it in piping times of peace. God grant that
in the dark hour of adversity, God may always raise up to them a
prophet, like good old Salvian, to preach to them once again the
everlasting judgments of God; and teach them that not faulty
constitutions, faulty laws, faulty circumstances of any kind, but the
faults of their own hearts and lives, are the causes of their misery.

M. Guizot, in his elaborate work on the History of Civilization in