Letter 149: On the question of whether God is the cause of evil.
To Cassianus.
By praising so highly the first letter I wrote to you concerning virtue and the not loving of money, you have given a token that the praise has persuaded you that the thing is good; for it is not possible, with regard to the things one considers to be good, to deny that one has been persuaded by them. For just as the things we censure we flee from, if we are of sound mind, so the things we admire we choose. Practice these things, then; for they travail to bring forth undying glory.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Ἄγαν ἐκθείσας τὴν πρώτην γραφεῖσάν μοι πρὸς σὲ περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ τοῦ μὴ ἐρᾶν χρημάτων ἐπιστολήν, σύμβολον ἐξήνεγκας τοῦ πεπεῖσθαί τι καλῶς ἔχειν τὸν ἔπαινον· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν, ἁ τις ἡγεῖται καλῶς ἔχειν (56), τούτοις οὐ φάσκειν πεπεῖσθαι. Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἃ ψέγομεν, ἀποφεύγομεν, εἰ σωφρονοῦμεν, οὕτως ἃ θαυμάζομεν, αἱρούμεθα. Ἄσκει τοίνυν ταῦτα· εὐκλείαν γὰρ ἀθάνατον ὠδίνει.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern isidore pelusium workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca (PG vol.78)
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