Lactantius — Divine Institutes 5.8
Those who think that no one is just have justice before their eyes, but they refuse to see it. Why do they describe it in poems or in every speech, complaining of its absence, when it is very easy to be good if they want? Why paint empty justice for us and wish it to fall from heaven as if shaped in some image?
Behold, it is in your sight: take it up if you can and set it in the dwelling of your breast, and do not think it difficult or alien to the times. Be fair and good, and justice--which you seek--will follow you of its own accord. Lay aside every evil thought from your hearts, and that golden time will return to you at once--which you cannot obtain otherwise than by beginning to worship the true God. But while the cult of the gods remains you desire justice on the earth, which can by no pact happen. Not even then could it, when you think it did, because before those gods whom you impiously worship were born there must have been worship of the one God through the earth--of him who curses malice and demands goodness, whose temple is not stones or clay but the human himself who bears the figure of God: which temple is adorned not with corruptible gifts of gold and gems but with eternal gifts of the virtues. Learn then, if any mind is left to you, that humans are evil and unjust because the gods are worshiped, and that all evils grow heavier daily in human affairs because God the Maker and Governor of this world has been abandoned, because impious religions have been taken up against what is right, and finally because you do not even allow God to be worshiped by a few. If God alone were worshiped there would be no dissensions and wars, since humans would know themselves to be sons of one God and therefore bound by the sacred and inviolable bond of divine kinship; there would be no plots, frauds, robberies, adulteries--if all swore together into the law of God, if all did what our one people does. How blessed and how golden the state of human affairs would be if gentleness and piety and peace and innocence and equity and temperance and faith lingered through the whole world! Then there would be no need of so many and so various laws to govern humans, since the one law of God would suffice for perfect innocence.
All the evils, therefore, by which the human race destroys itself in turn, the unjust and impious cult of the gods introduced. For they could not keep piety who had denied the common father of all--God--like faithless and rebel children.
Latin
Qui ergo putant iustum esse neminem, ante oculos habent iustitiam, sed eam nolunt cernere. quid est enim cur illam uel in carminibus uel in omni sermone describant conquerentes eius absentiam, cum sit facillimum bonos esse, si uelint? quid nobis inanem iustitiam depingitis et optatis cadere de caelo tamquam in aliquo simulacro figuratam?
ecce in conspectu uestro est: suscipite si potestis eamque in domicilio uestri pectoris conlocate, nec difficile aut alienum a temporibus existimetis. estote aequi ac boni, et sequetur uos sua sponte iustitia quam quaeritis. deponite omnem malam cogitationem de cordibus uestris, et statim uobis tempus illut aureum reuertetur: quod aliter consequi non potestis, quam si deum uerum colere coeperitis. uos autem manente cultu deorum iustitiam desideratis m terra, quod fieri nullo pacto potest. sed ne tum quidem potuit, cum putatis, quia nondum natis diis istis quos inpie colitis necesse est unius dei cultum fuisse per terram, eius scilicet qui execratur malitiam exigitque bonitatem, cuius templum est non lapides aut lutum, sed homo ipse, qui figuram dei gestat: quod templum non auri et gemmarum donis corruptibilibus, sed aeternis uirtutum muneribus ornatur. discite igitur, si quid uobis reliquae mentis est, homines ideo malos et iniustos esse, quia dii coluntur, et ideo mala omnia rebus humanis cottidie ingrauescere, quia deus mundi huius effector et gubernator derelictus est, quia susceptae sunt contra quam fas est inpiae religiones, postremo quia ne coli quidem uel a paucis deum sinitis. quodsi solus deus coleretur, non essent dissensiones et bella, cum scirent homines unius se dei filios esse ideoque diuinae necessitudinis sacro et inuiolabili uinculo copulatos, nullae fierent insidiae, cum scirent cuiusmodi poenas deus animarum interfectoribus praepararet, qui clandestina scelera et ipsas etiam cogitationes peruidet, non essent fraudes et rapinae, si deo praecipiente didicissent et suo et paruo esse contenti, ut fragilibus et caducis solida et aeterna praeferrent, non essent adulteria et stupra et mulierum prostitutiones, si esset omnibus notum damnari a deo quidquid adpetitur ultra generandi cupiditatem, nec feminam necessitas cogeret pudorem suum profanare, ut uictum sibi obscenissimum quaerat, cum et mares libidinem continerent et habentium pia et religiosa conlatio non habentibus subueniret: non essent igitur, ut dixi, haec omnia in terris mala, si ab omnibus in legem dei coniuraretur, si ab uniuersis fierent quae unus noster populus operatur. quam beatus esset quamque aureus humanarum rerum status, si per totum orbem mansuetudo et pietas et pax et innocentia et aequitas et temperantia et fides moraretur! demque ad regendos homines non opus esset tam multis et tam uariis legibus, cum ad perfectam innocentiam dei lex una sufficeret, neque carceribus neque gladiis praesidum neque terrore poenarum, cum praeceptorum caelestium salubritas humanis pectoribus infusa ultro ad iustitiae opera homines erudiret. nunc autem mali sunt ignoratione recti ac boni. quod quidem Cicero uidit. disputans enim de legibus sicut una inquit eademque natura mundus omnibus partibus inter se congruentibus cohaeret ac nititur, sic omnes homines inter se natura confusi prauitate dissentiunt neque se intellegunt esse consanguineos et subiectos omnes sub unam eandemque tutelam: quod si teneretur, deorum profecto uitam homines uiuerent.
uniuersa igitur mala, quibus humanum genus se ipsum inuicem conficit, iniustus atque inpius deorum cultus induxit. nec enim poterant retinere pietatem qui communem omnium patrem +deum tamquam perfidi ac rebelles liberi abnegassent.