Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.75
75.1. You oppose and retort: “Why was the Savior sent so late?” — In infinite, perpetual ages nothing at all should be called late. For where there is no end and no beginning, nothing is premature, nothing tardy. Time is known from limits and extremities, which the series and boundless continuation of ages cannot have.
2. What if the very things to which help had to be brought demanded that opportunity of time? What if things of old were of one condition, later things of another? What if the ancients had to be aided one way, and later people had to be provided for another way?
3. Do you not hear your own letters recalling that there were once demigod men, heroes, with huge and vast bodies? Do you not read that infants under their mothers’ breasts uttered a hundred-year wail, whose bones dug up in various regions made their finders believe they were remains of human limbs?
4. It can therefore be that almighty God, God alone, then at last sent Christ after the race of humans began to be of a more broken and weaker nature—ours. If what was done today could have been done before thousands of years, the highest King would have done it; or if after as many thousands what was done today ought to have been fulfilled, nothing compelled God not to wait for the necessary measures of times. His affairs are carried through by fixed reasons, and what has once been decreed to happen can be changed by no novelty.
Latin
75.1. Tu opponas et referas: ''Cur tam sero emissus est sospitator?''. - In infinitis, perpetuis saeculiis nihil omnino dicendum est serum. Ubi enim finis et initium nullum est, nihil praematurum est, nihil tardum. Tempus enim a finibus et extremitatibus noscitur, quae habere non potest series et immoderata continuatio saeculorum.
2. Quid enim si res ipsae, quibus opem conveniebat ferri, oportunitatem istam temporis exigebant? quid si alterius condicionis antiqua, alterius fuere sequentia? quid si priscis aliter subveniri, aliter debuit posterioribus consuli?
3. Nonne litteras auditis commemorantes vestras fuisse homines olim semideos, heroas, cum immanibus corporibus atque vastis? non infantes sub uberibus matrum centenarios legitis edidisse vagitum, quorum ossa variis in regionibus eruta vi? repertoribus fecerunt fidem humanorum reliquias esse membrorum?
4. Potest ergo fieri, ut tum demum emiserit Christum deus omnipotens, deus solus, postquam gens hominum fractior et infirmior coepit nostra esse natura. Si quod hodie factum est, ante milia fieri potuisset annorum, fecisset istud rex summus, aut si post totidem milia id quod hodie factum est debuisset inpleri, nihil deum cogebat necessarias temporum non expectare mensuras. Rationibus fixis peraguntur res eius et quod semel decretum est fieri nulla potest novitate mutari.