Impatience originates with the devil and is the root of every sin

But to hammer out a discussion of matters essential to faith is not idle, because it is not fruitless either. Talk that builds up is never shameful, if it is ever shameful at all. So when the subject is some good thing, the case demands that we also review its opposite. For you will throw more light on what should be pursued if you likewise set out what should be avoided. Let us consider, then, whether impatience, just as patience is in God, was likewise born and discovered in our adversary, so that from this it may appear how fundamentally it opposes faith. For what was conceived by the rival of God is certainly no friend to the things of God. The same discord exists between the things as between their authors. Moreover, since God is the best and the devil by contrast the worst, their very difference testifies that neither does the work of the other, so that we cannot think that anything good has been produced by the evil one any more than anything evil by the good one.

I detect the birth of impatience in the devil himself, already at that time when he impatiently bore the Lord God subjecting all the works he had made to his own image, that is, to man. For he would not have grieved if he had endured it, and he would not have envied man if he had not grieved. He deceived him because he had envied; he had envied because he had grieved; he had grieved because he had certainly not borne it patiently. Whether that angel of perdition was evil or impatient first, I do not care to ask, since it is plain that either impatience began from malice or malice from impatience, and that they then conspired together and grew up inseparable in the bosom of one father. But the very thing he had first experienced, through which he had entered into sin, he knew from his own trial what would help toward sinning, and he summoned it to drive man into crime. The woman, met by him at once, and I would not rashly say that through that very conversation she was breathed upon by his spirit, infected with impatience. So much so that she would never have sinned at all if she had preserved patience toward the divine prohibition. What of the fact that she alone did not endure being approached, but with Adam—not yet her husband, not yet owing her his ears—she was impatient even of silence, and made him a conduit of that which she had drawn from the evil one? So another man also perishes through the impatience of another, and he himself would soon perish through his own impatience, committed in both directions: toward God's warning and toward the devil's deception, not enduring to keep the former and refuse the latter. From here came the first origin of judgment, as of the offense; from here God began to be angry, where man was led to offend. From then on God's first patience, whence his first indignation; he who was then content with a curse alone held back from the impulse of punishment against the devil the tempter. Or what crime committed before this impatience is charged to man? He was innocent, a friend of God in close proximity, and a cultivator of paradise. But once he fell under impatience, he ceased to have a taste for God, ceased to be able to endure heavenly things. From then on man, given to the earth and cast out from God's eyes, began easily to be seized by impatience in everything that would offend God.

For immediately that impatience, conceived by the seed of the devil with the fertility of malice, gave birth to a son, wrath, and trained the offspring in her own arts. For what she herself had plunged Adam and Eve into—death—she also taught her son to begin with homicide. I would ascribe this to impatience in vain, if that Cain, the first murderer and first fratricide, bore his offerings being refused by the Lord calmly and not impatiently; if he was not angry with his brother; if, in short, he killed no one. But since he could not have killed unless angry, nor been angry unless impatient, it shows that what he did through anger must be referred to that from which anger was suggested. These were the cradles, so to speak, of impatience in its infancy. But how great its growth soon after! And no wonder. For if it sinned first, it follows that, because it was first, it is also the sole womb of every offense, pouring from its own fountain the varied streams of crimes. Homicide has indeed been mentioned. But since wrath was born from the beginning, whatever causes it afterward found for itself, it refers to impatience as to its own origin. For whether someone commits that crime out of enmity or for plunder, the first thing is that he becomes impatient either of hatred or of greed. Whatever compels him, without impatience no crime can be accomplished. Who has entered into adultery without impatience of lust? And if it is forced upon women by payment, that sale of chastity is certainly arranged by impatience of scorning gain. These are the principal offenses in the Lord's sight. For to put it briefly, every sin must be ascribed to impatience. Impatience is the evil of good. No one is unchaste without being impatient of chastity, nor dishonest without impatience of honesty, nor impious without impatience of piety, nor restless without impatience of quiet. For anyone to become evil, he cannot persevere in being good.

Such a hydra of offenses, then—why would it not offend the Lord, who disapproves of evils? Is it not also manifest that Israel itself always sinned against God through impatience, from the time when, forgetting the heavenly arm by which it had been drawn out from the afflictions of Egypt, it demanded gods from Aaron to lead it, and poured its contributions into an idol of its gold? For they impatiently received the necessary delays of Moses' meeting with the Lord. After the edible rain of manna, after the watery stream from the rock, they despaired of the Lord, not enduring a three-day thirst. For this too is charged against them by the Lord as impatience. And not to wander through every instance: they never sinned except through impatience, and through impatience they perished. How did they lay hands on the prophets, except through impatience of hearing? And on the Lord himself, through impatience even of seeing. But if they had entered into patience, they would have been set free.