Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter XI

by Arnobius

11. Would you venture to say that, in this universe, this thing or the other thing is an evil, whose origin and cause you are unable to explain and to analyze?^[1] And because it interferes with your lawful, perhaps even your unlawful pleasures, would you say that it is pernicious and adverse? What, then, because cold is disagreeable to your members, and is wont to chill^[2] the warmth of your blood, ought not winter on that account to exist in the world? And because you are unable^[3] to endure the hottest rays of the sun, is summer to be removed from the year, and a different course of nature to be instituted under different laws? Hellebore is poison to men; should it therefore not grow? The wolf lies in wait by the sheepfolds; is nature at all in fault, because she has produced a beast most dangerous to sheep? The serpent by his bite takes away life; a reproach, forsooth, to creation, because it has added to animals monsters so cruel.

Footnotes

1. “To analyze”—dissolvere—is in the ms. marked as spurious.
2. In the ms. we find “to chill and numb”—congelare, constringere; but the last word, too, is marked as spurious.
3. ms. sustinere (marked as a gloss), “to sustain;” perferre, “to endure.”