Why do we desire peace?

For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot into an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. (City of God, p35)

Augustine laid this charge against the citizens of Rome after its overthrow; yet his words could have spoken just as clearly and forcefully against the citizens of the United States.

He continues:

[U]nscrupulus ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. (ibid. p36)

and

Depraved by good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquility of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury. . . . You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched, and have remained most profligate. (ibid. p37)

I count myself one a multitude who have not learned enough from history. As I delve into the City of God, I hope to be both rebuked, as I already have been, and educated for the honor of Christ and the good of His church.