Annotatio CLXXXVIII
”From usuries and iniquity he shall redeem their souls.” — Psalm 71:14
Strabo [Walafrid Strabo], in his Ordinary Gloss, weighing what the usuries are which David here mentions, says that the usuries are the sins, which bring forth for us punishments with much and great interest:1 “For God exacts more in punishments than has been committed in faults.” But these words are taken from the commentaries of Augustine, expounding this little verse. St. Thomas, in book 4 of the Sentences, distinction 46, question 2, article 2, noted this sentence as [being] misappropriated by those who think that God punishes the sins of men beyond [their] desert; and he says it must be understood not according to an excess of the punishment beyond the fault in the intensity and gravity of the penalty, but according to the duration of time: because for a momentary delectation an eternal punishment is inflicted. For it is established that the duration of the punishment be not proportioned to the duration of the fault, but that the intensity of the punishment correspond to the enormity of the fault2 — as has been shown elsewhere.