Matthew 5:45: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on just and the unjust.”

Romans 2:4-5: “despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds.”

In The City of God, Book I, Chapter 8: “Of the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Often Indiscriminately Accrue to Good and Wicked Men,” Augustine builds his argument from the texts noted above, and writes, “nevertheless does the patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience….But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer…. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by unhappiness…. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing….And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.”