(7) Further, the counsels and activities of those who have rebelled, being partial, proceed from a bad disposition, as bodily diseases from a bad constitution, but are guided by universal Providence to a salutary issue, even though the cause be productive of disease. It is accordingly the greatest achievement of divine Providence, not to allow the evil, which has sprung from voluntary apostasy, to remain useless, and for no good, and not to become in all respects injurious. For it is the work of the divine wisdom, and excellence, and power, not alone to do good (for this is, so to speak, the nature of God, as it is of fire to warm and of light to illumine), but especially to ensure that what happens through the evils hatched by any, may come to a good and useful issue, and to use to advantage those things which appear to be evils, as also the testimony which accrues from temptation.

Let each of us also dig down after the root of evil within us and pull it out of our hearts from the root. It will be uprooted if we recognize it. But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces fruit in our hearts. It dominates us. We are its slaves, and it takes us captive so that we do what we do [not] want and do [not] do what we want. It is powerful because we do not recognize it. As long as [it] exists, it stays active.

(1) I have not, therefore, O Asclepius and Ammon, said what many say, that God could not excise and banish evil from the Scheme of Things;—to whom no answer need at all be given. Yet for your sakes I will continue what I have begun, and give a reason. They say that God ought to have freed the World from bad in every way; for so much is it in the World, that it doth seem to be as though it were one of its limbs. This was foreseen by Highest God and [due] provision made, as much as ever could have been in reason made, then when He thought it proper to endow the minds of men with sense, and science and intelligence.

(2) "And I took from all a third of their power, that they should no more be active in their evil doings, and that, if the men who are in the world, invoke them in their mysteries--those which the angels who transgressed have brought down, that is their sorceries,--in order that, therefore, if they invoke them in their evil doings, they may not be able to accomplish them.

(96) Woe to you who requite your neighbour with evil; For ye shall be requited according to your works.

(36) "The evil-doer he hath not caused to go forth with him!"

(17) For if anything is caused through folly, and the operation or rather co-operation of the devil, this thing is not straightway the devil or folly. For no action is wisdom. For wisdom is a habit. And no action is a habit. The action, then, that arises from ignorance, is not already ignorance, but an evil through ignorance, but not ignorance. For neither perturbations of mind nor sins are vices, though proceeding from vice.

(31) The Cause of things good is One. If the Evil is contrary to the Good, the many causes of the Evil, certainly those productive of things evil, are not principles and powers, but want of power, and want of strength, and a mixing of things dissimilar without proportion. Neither are things evil unmoved, and always in the same condition, but endless and undefined, and borne along in different things, and those endless. The Good will be beginning and end of all, even things evil, for, for the sake of the Good, are all things, both those that are good, and those that are contrary. For we do even these as desiring the Good (for no one does what he does with a view to the Evil), wherefore the Evil has not a subsistence, but a parasitical subsistence, coming into being for the sake of the Good, and not of itself.

(109) Ye who have done good shall wait for those days till an end is made of those who work evil; and an end of the might of the transgressors.

(12) Again, the Lord clearly shows sins and transgressions to be in our own power, by prescribing modes of cure corresponding to the maladies; showing His wish that we should be Corrected by the shepherds, in Ezekiel; blaming, I am of opinion, some of them for not keeping the commandments. "That which was enfeebled ye have not strengthened," and so forth, down to, "and there was none to search out or turn away."

(4) But if strict accuracy must be employed in dealing with them, let them know, that that which does not prevent what we assert to have taken place in the theft, is not a cause at all; but that what prevents is involved in the accusation of being a cause. For he that protects with a shield is the cause of him whom he protects not being wounded; preventing him, as he does, from being wounded. For the demon of Socrates was a cause, not by not preventing, but by exhorting, even if (strictly speaking) he did not exhort. And neither praises nor censures, neither rewards nor punishments, are right, when the soul has not the power of inclination and disinclination, but evil is involuntary. Whence he who prevents is a cause; while he who prevents not judges justly the soul's choice. So in no respect is God the author of evil. But since free choice and inclination originate sins, and a mistaken judgment sometimes prevails, from which, since it is ignorance and stupidity, we do not take pains to recede, punishments are rightly inflicted. For to take fever is involuntary; but when one takes fever through his own fault, from excess, we blame him. Inasmuch, then, as evil is involuntary, - for no one prefers evil as evil; but induced by the pleasure that is in it, and imagining it good, considers it desirable; -such being the case, to free ourselves from ignorance, and from evil and voluptuous choice, and above all, to withhold our assent from those delusive phantasies, depends on ourselves. The devil is called "thief and robber;" having mixed false prophets with the prophets, as tares with the wheat. "All, then, that came before the Lord, were thieves and robbers;" not absolutely all men, but all the false prophets, and all who were not properly sent by Him. For the false prophets possessed the prophetic name dishonestly, being prophets, but prophets of the liar. For the Lord says, "Ye are of your father the devil; and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."

(14) ¶But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.

(8) And as to him who (now by evil power) delivers up my settlements to harm, let not his burning (wrath) in deeds attain me. But bearing back the (evil will and evil influence of such), let these things come (back) to him in anger. Let that to his body come which holds from welfare; but let no (help) at all (approach him, which may) keep him back from misery. (And let this happen as I speak) from (vengeful) hate, O Lord!

(35) The learned have had many disputations, questions, conceits and opinions concerning the fierce malignity and evil that is in all the creatures in this world, and even in the very sun and stars; moreover, there are some so very poisonous and venomous beasts, worms and vegetables in this world, that thereupon rational men have justly wondered, and some have concluded peremptorily, That God must needs have willed the evil also, seeing he has created so much that is evil; and some have laid the blame and fault thereof upon the fall of Adam, and some have imputed it to the work and doings of the devil.

(35) Now the Oracles call conscious transgressors those who are thoroughly weak as regards the ever memorable knowledge or the practise of the Good, and who, knowing the will, do not perform it,--those who are hearers indeed, but are weak concerning the faith, or the energy of the Good. And for some, it is against their will to understand to do good, by reason of the deviation or weakness of the will. And in short, the Evil (as we have often said) is want of strength and want of power, and defect, either of the knowledge, or the never to be forgotten knowledge, or of the faith, or of the aspiration, or of the energy of the Good. Yet, some one may say, the weakness is not punishable, but on the contrary is pardonable. Now, if the power were not granted, the statement might hold good; but, if power comes from the Good, Who giveth, according to the Oracles, the things suitable to all absolutely, the failure and deviation, and departure and declension of the possession from the Good of our own proper goods is not praiseworthy. But let these things suffice to have been sufficiently said according to our ability in our writings " Concerning just and Divine chastisement" throughout which sacred treatise the infallibility of the Oracles has cast aside those sophistical statements as senseless words, speaking injustice and falsehood against Almighty God. But now, according to our ability, the Good has been sufficiently praised, as really lovable,--as beginning and end of all--as embracing things existing--as giving form to things not existing--as Cause of all good things--as guiltless of things evil--as Providence and Goodness complete--and soaring above things that are and things that are not--and turning to good things evil, and the privation of Itself--as by all desired, and loved, and esteemed, and whatever else, the true statement, as I deem, has demonstrated in the preceding.

(3) Grant, O Thoth, what Tmu hath decreed. Thou seest not the iniquities, thou art not pained at their attacks upon the years, and their invasions upon the months, because they have done their mischiefs in secret

(2) The devil has taught man sorcery or witchcraft, thereby to strengthen and fortify his kingdom. But if he had revealed to man the right, true, fundamental ground, which lurked behind or under sorcery, many would have let it alone altogether, and not have meddled with it at all.

(40) And so it is seen, how the Providence of God is come to the Help of the Kingdom of this World, and has by the Spirit of this World stirred up Rulers, who have inflicted Punishment; yet the Spirit of God complains of them, that they are turned Tyrants, who suppress all with their Power; and the Abellish Church in Love consists not therein, but the strong Might of God, for the suppressing of Evil-doers.

(5) The laws exist, but who sets hand to them? No one; because the shepherd who precedes Can ruminate, but cleaveth not the hoof; Wherefore the people that perceives its guide Strike only at the good for which it hankers, Feeds upon that, and farther seeketh not. Clearly canst thou perceive that evil guidance The cause is that has made the world depraved, And not that nature is corrupt in you. Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was Two suns to have, which one road and the other, Of God and of the world, made manifest. One has the other quenched, and to the crosier The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it That by main force one with the other go, Because, being joined, one feareth not the other; If thou believe not, think upon the grain, For by its seed each herb is recognized. In the land laved by Po and Adige, Valour and courtesy used to be found, Before that Frederick had his controversy;

(29) But neither is it this which we affirm--the "privation fights against the Good by its own power "; for the complete privation is altogether powerless, and the partial has the power, not in respect of privation, but in so far as it is not a complete privation. For, whilst privation of good is partial, it is not, as yet, an evil, and when, it has become an accomplished fact, the nature of the evil has departed also.