“You have despised,” or, as is more carefully expressed in the Greek, “You have reduced to nothing all those who depart from your judgments, for their thoughts are unjust” (Ps 118[119]L118). That is why the Psalmist had cried out, “Help me and I will be safe, and I will meditate on your just ways forever” (v. 117), because God has reduced to nothing all who depart from his judgments. Why do they depart from them? “Because,” he says, “their thoughts are unjust.” That’s where–in one’s thoughts–that one approaches, that’s where one departs. All deeds, bad or good, come from thoughts: it’s in one’s thoughts that one is either innocent or guilty. That’s why it was written, “Holy thoughts will keep you” (Prov 2:2), and elsewhere we read, “Inquiry will be made into the thoughts of the impious” (Wis 1:9), and the Apostle says, “Their thoughts accusing or defending them” (Rom 2:15).

How can anyone be happy who is miserable in his thoughts? Or how is a person not miserable if he has been reduced to nothing? Wickedness, after all, is very sterile. It was rightly said, “Let the wicked be confounded who act in vain” (Ps 24[25]:4), that is, who act to no effect. (EnPs 118[119]/24, 6; PL 37, 1571)

I’m tempted to disagree with Augustine here. Wickedness, unfortunately, is often quite fertile, as evil is met by more evil, and a spiral of evil begins to twist until it may enclose everyone in its coils, to the point that more evil is what is to be expected. Bernard Lonergan interpreted St. Paul’s “reign of sin” (Rom 5:21) as “the expectation of sin,” the likelihood of sin. How can one escape it? “Unhappy man, who shall deliver me from this body of death” (Rom 7:24).