Lactantius — Divine Institutes 6.6

I have said that which was the first thing, that the knowledge of good is not virtue ; and secondly, I have shown what virtue is, and in what it consists. It follows that I should show this also, that the philosophers were ignorant of what is good and evil ; and this briefly, because it has been almost made plain in the third book, when I was discussing the subject of the chief good. And because they did not know what the chief good was, they necessarily erred in the case of the other goods and evils which are not the chief; for no one can weigh these with a true judgment who does not possess the fountain itself from which they are derived. Now the source of good things is God ; but of evils , he who is always the enemy of the divine name, of whom we have often spoken. From these two sources good and evil things have their origin.

Those which proceed from God have this object, to procure immortality , which is the greatest good; but those which arise from the other have this office, to call man away from heavenly things and sink him in earthly things, and thus to consign him to the punishment of everlasting death, which is the greatest evil . Is it therefore doubtful but that all those were ignorant of what was good and evil , who neither knew God nor the adversary of God? Therefore they referred the end of good things to the body, and to this short life, which must be dissolved and perish: they did not advance further.

But all their precepts, and all the things which they introduce as goods, adhere to the earth, and lie on the ground, since they die with the body, which is earth; for they do not tend to procure life for man , but either to the acquisition or increase of riches, honour , glory , and power, which are altogether mortal things, as much so indeed as he who has laboured to obtain them. Hence is that saying, It is virtue to know the end of an object to be sought, and the means of procuring it; for they enjoin by what means and by what practices property is to be sought, for they see that it is often sought unjustly .

But virtue of this kind is not proposed to the wise man; for it is not virtue to seek riches, of which neither the finding nor the possession is in our power: therefore they are more easy to be gained and to be retained by the bad than by the good. Virtue, then, cannot consist in the seeking of those things in the despising of which the force and purport of virtue appears; nor will it have recourse to those very things which, with its great and lofty mind , it desires to trample upon and bruise under foot; nor is it lawful for a soul which is earnestly fixed on heavenly goods to be called away from its immortal pursuits, that it may acquire for itself these frail things. But the course of virtue especially consists in the acquisition of those things which neither any man, nor death itself, can take away from us.