It is right and holy therefore, men and brethren, rather to obey God than to follow those who, through pride and sedition, have become the leaders of a detestable emulation. For we shall incur no slight injury, but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumults, so as to draw us away from what is good. Let us be kind one to another after the pattern of the tender mercy and benignity of our Creator. For it is written, "The kind-hearted shall inhabit the land, and the guiltless shall be left upon it, but transgressors shall be destroyed from off the face of it." [Proverbs 2:21-22] And again [the Scripture] says, "I saw the ungodly highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon: I passed by, and, behold, he was not; and I diligently sought his place, and could not find it. Preserve innocence, and look on equity: for there shall be a remnant to the peaceable man." [Psalm 37:35-37]
But the wicked will be destroyed from the earth, etc. These words can be taken not generally about all the condemned, but specifically about those who seem to belong to the land of the Lord, that is, the Church, and yet due to their merits are removed from it: some openly by the judgment of the Church itself, like Simon, Arius, and Porphyry; some secretly by the judgment of the invisible judge, like countless even of those who seem good to people. For he calls manifest apostates the wicked; but all those acting wickedly who, having received the sacraments of faith, degenerate from its purity in some manner. Both, however, in the future retribution, will be destroyed from the land of the living, because the wicked will not dwell near the Lord, nor will the unjust remain in his sight. And rightly so, because he predicted many things about the ways of the good and evil, he subjoined in conclusion the end of both, just as in the preceding parable, which forbade associations with robbers, saying of the end of the wicked: And the prosperity of fools will destroy them; saying of the end of the good: But whoever listens to me will dwell without terror. These verses which we have recently discussed, can be understood about the ancient people of God, because when they lived uprightly, they happily remained in their land, but when they sinned, they were destroyed by enemies.
[AD 99] Clement of Rome on Proverbs 2:21-22