Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.54
54.1. "Can anything then," someone will say, "happen apart from God's will?" — We must examine carefully and look with no small care lest, while we think we honor God by such a question, we slide into the opposite impiety, destroying the eminence of his majesty.
2. "By what reason, for what cause?" — Because if all things are accomplished by his will and nothing can arise or fall among things without his nod, it necessarily follows that all evils also are understood to spring by his will.
3. But if we should wish to say the contrary, rejecting from him the causes of the worst things, that he is conscious of no evil and generator of none, then either the worst things will begin to appear to happen against his will or—what is monstrous to say—with him not knowing, unaware, and I-know-not. Again, if we should wish to say that there are no evils, as we have found it thought and pleasing to some, all peoples and entire nations will cry out, showing us their tortures and many forms of dangers by which at every point the human race is burned and torn.
4. Then they will ask us: "Why, if there are no evils, do you abstain from certain works and crimes? why do you not do all that impatient lust has ordered and commanded? why finally do you set penalties by terrible laws against the guilty? For what more monstrous stupidity can be found than to contend that there are no evils and yet to destroy and condemn sinners as if they were evil?"
Latin
54.1. ''Ergone, inquiet aliquis, sine dei voluntate quicquam potis est fieri?''. - Considerandum est nobis sollicite et cura inspiciendum non parva, ne dum honorare nos deum tali interrogatione censemus, in contrarium labamur nefas maiestatis eius eminentiam destruentes.
2. ''Qua ratione, qua causa?''. - Quoniam si cuncta eius voluntate confiunt nec citra eius nutum quicquam potest in rebus vel provenire vel cadere, necessario sequitur, <ut> mala etiam cuncta voluntate eius intellegantur enasci.
3. Sin autem dicere voluerimus contra, pessimorum ab eo reicientes causas, mali esse conscium generatoremque nullius, incipient evideri aut eo invito res pessimae fieri aut, quod sit immane dixisse, nesciente, ignaro ac nescio. Rursus autem si dicere nulla esse voluerimus mala, sicut esse nonnullis opinatum et placitum repperimus, reclamabunt cunctae gentes universaeque nationes, cruciatus nobis ostentantes suos et discriminum species multiformes, quibus puncta per singula genus uritur et laceratur humanum.
4. Tum deinde a nobis exquirent: ''Cur, mala si nulla sunt, ab operibus vos certis et facinoribus abstinetis? cur non omnia facitis quae inpatiens iusserit atque inperaverit libido? cur in noxios denique terribilibus poenas constituitis legibus? Nam stoliditas inveniri quae inmanior potest, quam mala esse nulla contendere et tamquam malos perdere et condemnare peccantis?''.