Difference in Sufferers   “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.  For as the same fire causes gold to grow brightly, and chaff to smoke... so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.  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.”       -- Augustine (353-429)