From https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/11/augustine-on-divine-punishment-of-good.html

Moreover, says Augustine, the difference between a truly righteous man and a wicked one is often exposed precisely by suffering:

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 glow 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.

Now, so far Augustine is addressing suffering that is unmerited.  But there is also suffering that good men can merit and bring upon themselves, as Augustine explains in chapter 9.  This is so in several ways.  First, of course, nobody’s perfect.  Even those who avoid the more blatant violations of Christian morality still typically exhibit moral failings of various lesser kinds:

Although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills.  For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.  Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.

But there is also the attitude that the good man takes toward those who do live especially wicked lives.  There are many who disapprove of such wickedness and would never practice it themselves, but who nevertheless, out of cowardice, refrain from criticizing it in others.  Here Augustine makes some remarks that are especially relevant to our times, and worth quoting at length:

Where can we readily find a man who holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions threatened?  Where is the man who lives with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them?  For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing.  So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they quite escape punishment.  Justly, when God afflicts them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners.

Here Augustine teaches that it is not enough to refrain from the sins of wicked men.  The Christian must also criticize them for their wickedness, and try to get them to repent of it.  To be sure, Augustine goes on to acknowledge that there may be occasions where one might justifiably opt to postpone such criticism until an opportune moment, or refrain from it out of a reasonable fear of doing more harm than good.  But he teaches here that it is not justifiable to refrain from such criticism merely because it is difficult, or because we fear causing offense and losing friends, or because we don’t want to risk losing status or other worldly goods.  For the wicked are in danger of damnation if they do not repent, and we “wickedly blind ourselves” if we shirk our duty to encourage them to do so.  Even if we avoid damnation ourselves, we will justly suffer alongside them when divine providence visits this-worldly punishments upon