II.2 chapter 1

We will first speak of the common division between angels and between man, how there are only two 'cities' because bad and good wills are separated the same.

We already mentioned that the holy angels and fallen angels are separated by their good or bad will, not by their nature, because God created them.
How is an evil will related to the misery of their state?
Because God is everything, and angels and man alike were created out of nothing, it is easy to see that angels and man cannot have their blessedness from their own nature ('quia ex nihilo creata est'), but must have it from God ('ex illo, a quo creata est'). (As we already stated that the only source of evil is deprivation of the good which is in God.)

But doesn't this make angels and man more wretched than other things because they can lose their blessedness?
Indeed only God cannot lose his blessedness because he has that blessedness in himself; however, angels and man that have their blessedness from God and therefore are changeable, are of a very good nature because they can share in the supreme good from God which is unchangeable. They exceed things which cannot feel anything and from nature cannot share in the highest good from God, also when they can become miserable: nobody would follow the same pattern of reasoning saying another member of the body is better than the eye because it cannot be blind. Even the fact that we call evil a vice proves that it is a good nature that was deprived.

II.1 chapter 28

About that we love that we love: it is obvious, for we desire that one does not only know what is good, but also loves it.

We love that we love that is good: for in man a love for what is bad can exist alongside a love for what is good, and the good for us will be that the first diminishes and the last grows. For animals love a sensual life, plants a vegetative life, but man should recognize that these things are only imprints from God their creator, and return (like the son in the gospel [Luke 15]) to his true being, eternal truth, and eternal and true love.

We know about our being, knowledge and love by inner enlightenment; but about the outcome of their good or bad use we do not know, but need to have or look for truthful witness about these things, which we shall treat later. Instead, we will now continue with what we already started, from the City of God, not in a state of pilgrimage and mortality, but immortal in the heavens, about the angels who forever maintain their allegiance to God, separated, as we told, from those that fell from God and became darkness.

II.1 chapter 18

For God would never have created any, I do not say angel, but even man, whose future wickedness he foreknew, unless he had equally known to what uses in behalf of the good he could turn him. In the orderliness of the world evil occurs as a contrast to the good, therefore making the good more beautiful.

II.1 chapter 2

How do we know about God?
It is not an easy thing to know God, because he is unchangeable unlike the other creatures. But God speaks though in a manner that even the deaf can hear him: because He speaks by truth to the mind of man. And the mind of man is what we believe part of the image of God in man. However, because the human mind has become weak and powerless by some besotting and inveterate vices, even powerless to improve, it needs faith to clean it. This faith is founded by and in Jesus Christ, mediator between God and man.