If mercy's inclination is toward those who commit transgressions, if there is plentiful grace for sinners, if God's generosity is oriented toward the unrighteous, and certainly if future goods are procured by present evil deeds, why should we take the difficult road of the virtues, why should we undertake the hard labor of acquiring righteousness, why should we continually endure the torments of preserving our innocense among the wicked? Let the crimes of human beings increase, so that heavenly benevolence may overlow, just as he said: "Let us do evil so that good things might come"; let us continue in sin so that grace may abound.
Brothers, the same person, namely, the Apostle himself, who asks the question, makes this response to it: Far from it! For how shall we who have died to sin live in it? When he says, Far from it! he has thereby denounced the thinking and the reasoning of the foolish. Indeed the physician is not beneficial to the wound, but to the cure and the healing; he rejoices, not in the festering sore or in diseases, but only in good health. So too is it with God, who on account of the massive extent of the wound has applied a massive and strong does of medicine; and he has bestowed grace not on the sin, but on the human being; he has rained down the shower of his mercy not to multiply, but to blot out offenses.
Let no one, let no one, I say, be so glad about his illness that he wishes to continue in his wounded state.
--St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 113, par. 3
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