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  CONFESSIONS - BOOK III - CHAPTER VIII
  by St. Augustine
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15. Can it ever, at any time or place, be unrighteous for a man to love
God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind; and
his neighbor as himself?[74] Similarly, offenses against nature are
everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and should be
punished. Such offenses, for example, were those of the Sodomites; and,
even if all nations should commit them, they would all be judged guilty
of the same crime by the divine law, which has not made men so that they
should ever abuse one another in that way. For the fellowship that
should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature of which
he is the author is polluted by perverted lust. But these offenses
against customary morality are to be avoided according to the variety of
such customs. Thus, what is agreed upon by convention, and confirmed by
custom or the law of any city or nation, may not be violated at the
lawless pleasure of any, whether citizen or stranger. For any part that
is not consistent with its whole is unseemly. Nevertheless, when God
commands anything contrary to the customs or compacts of any nation,
even though it were never done by them before, it is to be done; and if
it has been interrupted, it is to be restored; and if it has never been
established, it is to be established. For it is lawful for a king, in
the state over which he reigns, to command that which neither he himself
nor anyone before him had commanded. And if it cannot be held to be
inimical to the public interest to obey him--and, in truth, it would be
inimical if he were not obeyed, since obedience to princes is a general
compact of human society--how much more, then, ought we unhesitatingly
to obey God, the Governor of all his creatures! For, just as among the
authorities in human society, the greater authority is obeyed before the
lesser, so also must God be above all.

16. This applies as well to deeds of violence where there is a real
desire to harm another, either by humiliating treatment or by injury.
Either of these may be done for reasons of revenge, as one enemy against
another, or in order to obtain some advantage over another, as in the
case of the highwayman and the traveler; else they may be done in order
to avoid some other evil, as in the case of one who fears another; or
through envy as, for example, an unfortunate man harming a happy one
just because he is happy; or they may be done by a prosperous man
against someone whom he fears will become equal to himself or whose
equality he resents. They may even be done for the mere pleasure in
another man\\

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/st-augustine/confessions-book-iii-chapter-viii/
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