Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter XLVI

by Arnobius

46. But, to say the same things again and again,^[1] let this belief, so monstrous and impious, be put far from us, that God, who preserves^[2] all things, the origin of the virtues and chief in^[3] benevolence, and, to exalt Him with human praise, most wise, just, making all things perfect, and that permanently,^[4] either made anything which was imperfect and not quite correct,^[5] or was the cause of misery or danger to any being, or arranged, commanded, and enjoined the very acts in which man’s life is passed and employed to flow from His arrangement. These things are unworthy of^[6] Him, and weaken the force of His greatness; and so far from His being believed to be their author, whoever imagines that man is sprung from Him is guilty of blasphemous impiety, man, a being miserable and wretched, who is sorry that he exists, hates and laments his state, and understands that he was produced for no other reason than lest evils should not have something^[7] through which to spread themselves, and that there might always be wretched ones by whose agonies some unseen and cruel power,^[8] adverse to men, should be gratified.

Footnotes

1. Lit., “again and more frequently.”
2. Lit., “the salvation of.”
3. Lit., “height of.”
4. Lit., “things perfect, and preserving the measure of their completeness;” i.e., continuing so.
5. So the ms., LB., Oberthür and Oehler, reading claudum et quod minus esset a recto. All other edd. read eminus—“at a distance from the right.”
6. Lit., “less than.”
7. Lit., “material.”
8. Lit., “some power latent and cruelty.”