[2831] Elogium.
[2832] Ergo.
[2833] Delator.
[2834] Deferendo, in reference to the word delator, our author's synonyme for diabolos.
[2835] Nisi.
[2836] Nisi.
[2837] Ezek. xxviii. 11-16 (Sept.).
[2838] Luke x. 18.
[2839] Læsuræ ="injuries." 'Adikemata en soi--Iniquitates in te."--Hieron.
[2840] Censum.
[2841] Forma.
[2842] Sustinens.
[2843] [Kaye. p. 313.]
Chapter XI.--If, After Man's Sin, God Exercised His Attribute of Justice and Judgment, This Was Compatible with His Goodness, and Enhances the True Idea of the Perfection of God's Character.
Up to the fall of man, therefore, from the beginning God was simply good; after that He became a judge both severe and, as the Marcionites will have it, cruel. Woman is at once condemned to bring forth in sorrow, and to serve her husband, [2844] although before she had heard without pain the increase of her race proclaimed with the blessing, Increase and multiply, and although she had been destined to be a help and not a slave to her male partner. Immediately the earth is also cursed, [2845] which before was blessed. Immediately spring up briers and thorns, where once had grown grass, and herbs, and fruitful trees. Immediately arise sweat and labour for bread, where previously on every tree was yielded spontaneous food and untilled [2846] nourishment. Thenceforth it is "man to the ground," and not as before, "from the ground"; to death thenceforth, but before, to life; thenceforth with coats of skins, but before, nakedness without a blush. Thus God's prior goodness was from [2847] nature, His subsequent severity from [2848] a cause. The one was innate, the other accidental; the one His own, the other adapted; [2849] the one issuing from Him, the other admitted by Him. But then nature could not have rightly permitted His goodness to have gone on inoperative, nor the cause have allowed His severity to have escaped in disguise or concealment. God provided the one for Himself, the other for the occasion. [2850] You should now set about showing also that the position of a judge is allied with evil, who have been dreaming of another god as a purely good one--solely because you cannot understand the Deity to be a judge; although we have proved God to be also a judge. Or if not a judge, at any rate a perverse and useless originator of a discipline which is not to be vindicated--in other words, not to be judged. You do not, however, disprove God's being a judge, who have no proof to show that He is a judge. You will undoubtedly have to accuse justice herself, which provides the judge, or else to reckon her among the species of evil, that is, to add injustice to the titles of goodness. But then justice is an evil, if injustice is a good. And yet you are forced to declare injustice to be one of the worst of things, and by the same rule are constrained to class justice amongst the most excellent. Since there is nothing hostile [2851] to evil which is not good, and no enemy of good which is not evil. It follows, then, that as injustice is an evil, so in the same degree is justice a good. Nor should it be regarded as simply a species of goodness, but as the practical observance [2852] of it, because goodness (unless justice be so controlled as to be just) will not be goodness, if it be unjust. For nothing is good which is unjust; while everything, on the other hand, which is just is good.
[2844] Gen. iii. 16.
[2845] Gen. iii. 18.
[2846] Secura.
[2847] Secundum.
[2848] Secundum.
[2849] Accommodata.
[2850] Rei.
[2851] Æmulum.
[2852] Tutela.
Chapter XII.--The Attributes of Goodness and Justice Should Not Be Separated. They are Compatible in the True God. The Function of Justice in the Divine Being Described.
Since, therefore, there is this union and agreement between goodness and justice, you cannot prescribe [2853] their separation. With what face will you determine the separation of your two Gods, regarding in their separate condition one as distinctively the good God, and the other as distinctively the just God? Where the just is, there also exists the good. In short, from the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His attributes advanced together. His goodness created, His justice arranged, the world; and in this process it even then decreed that the world should be formed of good materials, because it took counsel with goodness. The work of justice is apparent, in the separation which was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth, between the water above and the water beneath, between the gathering together of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater lights and the lesser, between the luminaries of the day and those of the night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge of death and of life, between the world and paradise, between the aqueous and the earth-born animals. As goodness conceived all things, so did justice discriminate them. With the determination of the latter, everything was arranged and set in order. Every site and quality [2854] of the elements, their effect, motion, and state, the rise and setting of each, are the judicial determinations of the Creator. Do not suppose that His function as a judge must be defined as beginning when evil began, and so tarnish His justice with the cause of evil. By such considerations, then, do we show that this attribute advanced in company with goodness, the author [2855] of all things,--worthy of being herself, too, deemed innate and natural, and not as accidentally accruing [2856] to God, inasmuch as she was found to be in Him, her Lord, the arbiter of His works.
[2853] Cavere. This is Oehler's reading, and best suits the sense of the passage and the style of our author.
[2854] Habitus.
[2855] Auctrice.
[2856] Obventiciam.