46. But, to say the same things again and again,3725 let this belief, so monstrous and impious, be put far from us, that God, who preserves3726 all things, the origin of the virtues and chief in3727 benevolence, and, to exalt Him with human praise, most wise, just, making all things perfect, and that permanently,3728 either made anything which was imperfect and not quite correct,3729 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 of3730 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 something3731 through which to spread themselves, and that there might always be wretched ones by whose agonies some unseen and cruel power,3732 adverse to men, should be gratified.
Footnotes
- 3725
Lit., “again and more frequently.”
- 3726
Lit., “the salvation of.”
- 3727
Lit., “height of.”
- 3728
Lit., “things perfect, and preserving the measure of their completeness;” i.e., continuing so.
- 3729
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.”
- 3730
Lit., “less than.”
- 3731
Lit., “material.”
- 3732
Lit., “some power latent and cruelty.”