Novatian, On the Trinity 5
V. 1. Whose legitimate angers and certain indignations we hold described and whose reported hatreds we know, yet we do not understand these things to have been referred to examples of human vices. 2. For all these things, although they can corrupt a human being, cannot at all spoil the divine power. For those passions will deservedly be said to be in human beings; in God they will not deservedly be judged. For a human can be corrupted through these, because he can be corrupted; God cannot be corrupted through these, because he also cannot be corrupted. 3. These things therefore have their force which they may exercise, but where passible matter comes first, not where impassible substance comes first.
4. For even that God is angry does not come from his vice, but he does that for our remedy. For he is indulgent even then when he threatens, while through these things human beings are called back to what is right. For those for whom reason is lacking toward an honorable life, fear is necessary, so that those who have abandoned reason may at least be moved by terror. And therefore all these either angers of God or hatreds or whatever are of this sort, while they are brought forth for our medicine, as the matter teaches, have come from counsel, not from vice. 5. Nor do they descend from frailty, on account of which they also cannot avail to corrupt God. For the diversity of materials in us from which we are has been accustomed to stir discord that corrupts us toward anger, which in God cannot be either from nature or from vice, while he is certainly not understood to have been constructed from bodily joinings. 6. For he is simple and without any bodily concretion, whatever that whole is which he alone knows himself to be, seeing that he has been called spirit. And therefore these things which in human beings are vicious and corrupting, while they are born from the corruptibility of the body itself and of matter, cannot exercise a force of corruptibility in God, seeing that, as we have said, they have come not from vice but from reason.
Latin
V. 1. Cuius etiamsi iracundias legitimas et indignationes quasdam descriptas tenemus et odia relata cognoscimus, non tamen haec intellegimus ad humanorum relata esse exempla uitiorum. 2. Haec enim omnia etsi hominem possunt corrumpere, diuinam uim non possunt omnino uitiare. Passiones enim istae in hominibus merito esse dicentur, in Deo non merito iudicabuntur. Corrumpi enim per haec homo potest, quia corrumpi potest; corrumpi per haec Deus non potest, quia nec corrumpi potest. 3. Habent igitur ista uim suam quam exerceant, sed ubi praecedit passibilis materia, non ubi praecedit impassibilis substantia. 4. Nam et quod irascitur Deus, non ex uitio eius uenit, sed ad remedium nostri illud facit. Indulgens est enim etiam tunc cum minatur, dum per haec homines ad recta reuocantur. Nam quibus ad honestam uitam deest ratio, metus est necessarius, ut qui rationem reliquerunt uel terrore moueantur. Et ideo omnes istae uel iracundiae Dei uel odia uel quaecumque sunt huiusmodi, dum ad medicinam nostram proferuntur, ut res docet, ex consilio, non ex uitio uenerunt.
5. Nec ex fragilitate descendunt, propter quod etiam ad corrumpendum Deum ualere non possunt. Materiarum enim in nobis ex quibus sumus diuersitas ad iracundiae consueuit corrumpentem nos excitare discordiam, quae in Deo uel ex natura uel ex uitio non potest esse, dum non utique ex coagmentis corporalibus intellegitur esse constructus. 6. Est enim simplex et sine ulla corporea concretione, quicquid illud est totus quod se solus scit esse, quandoquidem spiritus sit dictus. Et ideo haec quae in hominibus uitiosa sunt et corrumpentia, dum ex corporis ipsius et materiae corruptibilitate nascuntur, in Deo corruptibilitatis uim exercere non possunt, quandoquidem, ut diximus, non ex uitio, sed ratione uenerunt.