22. Therefore, while you give us discipline, you give our enemies a multiplicity of scourges, so that in judging we may think on your goodness, and when we are judged, we may hope for mercy.
23. Therefore, also to these, who have lived their lived their life irrationally and unjustly, through these things that they worshiped, you gave the greatest torments.
24. And, indeed, they wandered for a long time in the way of error, valuing those things as gods, which are worthless even among animals, living in foolish irrational behavior.
25. Because of this, you have given a judgment in derision, as if from foolish children.
26. But those who have not been corrected by mockery and chiding, have experienced a judgment worthy of God.
27. For among those who were indignant at their sufferings, which came through those things that they reputed to be gods, when they saw that they would be destroyed by these same things, those who formerly refused knowledge of him, now acknowledged the true God, and, because of this, the end of their condemnation came upon them.