117. A variety of similes can be used to illustrate the conquest of the hells, the ordering of the heavens and then the establishment of the church. These can be compared with a band of robbers or rebels who invade a kingdom or a city, set fire to the houses in it, loot the inhabitants' goods, divide their booty between them and enjoy themselves boasting of their prowess. The act of redemption then can be compared to a just king who attacks them with his army, puts some of them to the sword, shuts up others in labour camps, and takes away their booty and returns it to his subjects, and afterwards imposes order on his kingdom, making it safe from any similar attack. Another comparison might be with troops of wild beasts breaking out from the forests and attacking flocks and herds, and people too, so that no one dares to leave the walls of their town to till the ground; so the fields are bare and the townsmen likely to die of famine. Then redemption can be compared with the killing and putting to flight of those wild beasts, and the protection of fields and countryside from any further such attack. Another comparison might be with a swarm of locusts eating all the greenstuff on the earth, and with measures taken to block their further progress. Likewise with caterpillars in early summer which strip trees of their leaves, and thus of their fruit too, so that they stand all bare as at midwinter; and the shaking of them off, so that gardens are restored to their flowering and fruitful condition. It would be the same with the church, if the Lord had not by the act of redemption separated the good from the evil, and cast one lot into hell, and raised the others into heaven. What would happen to an empire or a kingdom devoid of justice and law-courts, designed to remove the wicked from the society of the good, and to protect the good from violence, so that everyone could live at home in safety, and, as it says in the Word, sit quietly under his own fig-tree and vine?