Lactantius — Divine Institutes 6.9

The first head of this law is to know God himself, to obey him alone, to worship him alone. For he cannot hold a human's reason who does not know God, the parent of his soul; which is the highest crime. Which ignorance makes him serve other gods, than which nothing more wicked can be committed. From here the step is already sloping toward malice through ignorance of the true and singular good, because God, whom he flees to know, is himself the fountain of goodness: or if he wills to follow justice, yet ignorant of divine right he will embrace his nation's laws as true right, which not justice but utility invented. For why have diverse and empty rights been founded through all peoples, except that each nation sanctioned for itself what it thought useful for its affairs? But how far utility withdraws from justice the Roman people itself teaches, which by declaring wars through the fetials and doing injuries legally and always taking and seizing others' things prepared for itself possession of the whole world. But these think themselves just if they do nothing against their own laws: which can also be ascribed to fear, if by dread of present punishments they abstain from crimes. But let us grant that by nature or, as the philosopher says, of their own accord they do what they are compelled by laws to do. Will they therefore be just because they obey humans' institutions, who themselves could either err or be unjust, as those founders of the Twelve Tables, or at least served public utility for the condition of the times? One thing therefore is civil right, which varies everywhere by manners, another true justice, which God has set uniform and simple for all: whom who does not know must necessarily also not know justice itself.

But let us suppose it can happen that someone by natural and inborn good takes true virtues, such as we have heard Cimon was at Athens, who both gave alms to the needy and invited the poor and clothed the naked: yet when that one thing which is greatest is missing, acknowledgment of God, already all those goods are superfluous and empty, so that he has labored in vain in pursuing them. For all his justice will be like a human body not having a head: in which although all the limbs both stand in their places and in shape and habit, yet because that which is principal of all is missing, it lacks both life and every sense. And so those limbs have only the form of limbs, they do not have use, as clearly as a head without a body. Like whom is he who though he does not not-know God lives unjustly: for he alone has what is highest, but in vain, since he lacks virtues as limbs. And so that there may be a living and sensible body, both acknowledgment of God is necessary as a head and all virtues as a body. So a human will become perfect and alive, but yet the whole sum is in the head, which although it cannot stand without all, still can without some. And he will indeed be a flawed and weak animal, but still will live, as he who both knows God and sins in some matter; for God gives pardon for sins. And so one can live without some limbs, without a head by no means. This fact makes it that philosophers, even if by nature they are good, still know nothing, are wise in nothing. All their teaching and virtue is without a head, because they do not know God, who is the head of virtue and teaching. Whom who has not acknowledged, though he may see, is blind, though he may hear, deaf, though he may speak, is tongueless. But when he has recognized the founder and parent of things, then he will both see and hear and speak. For he has begun to have a head, in which all the senses are placed, that is eyes and ears and tongue. For surely he sees who has looked with the heart's eyes on the truth, in which God is, or God, in whom truth is; he hears who fixes divine voices and life-giving precepts to his breast; he speaks who, discussing heavenly things, narrates the virtue and majesty of the singular God.

Wherefore there is no doubt that whoever has not acknowledged God is impious, and all his virtues, which he thinks he has or holds, are found on that death-bearing way, which is wholly of darkness. Therefore there is nothing for anyone to congratulate himself on if he has obtained these empty virtues, because not only must he be wretched who lacks present goods, but also foolish who takes up the greatest labors in his life in vain. For with the hope of immortality removed which God promises to those turning in his religion, for the sake of obtaining which virtue is to be sought and whatever evils happen are to be endured, there will certainly be the greatest emptiness in willing to obey virtues, which bring calamities and labors to a human in vain. For if virtue is to suffer and undergo bravely poverty, exile, pain, death, which are feared by the rest, what finally of good does it have in itself, why do the philosophers say it is to be sought for its own sake? Clearly they delight in superfluous and empty punishments, for whom it is allowed to live calmly. For if souls are mortal, if virtue after the body is dissolved will be nothing, why do we flee the goods assigned to us as if either ungrateful or unworthy to enjoy divine gifts? Which goods, that we may have them, one must live wickedly and impiously, because poverty follows virtue, that is justice. He is therefore not sound who with no greater hope set forward prefers labors and tortures and miseries to those goods which the rest use in life. But if virtue, as is most rightly said by us, is to be taken up, because it is agreed a human is born to it, some greater hope ought to underlie, which may bring great and splendid comfort of the evils and labors which it is virtue's to endure. And not otherwise can virtue, though hard in itself, be held for a good, than if it balances its bitterness with the greatest good. Equally not otherwise must one abstain from these present goods, than if there are other greater ones, for whose sake it is worth both omitting pleasures and sustaining all evils. But those are no others, as I taught in the third book, except of perpetual life. But who can furnish this except God, who has set virtue itself forward? Therefore the sum of things turns in acknowledgment and worship of God: in this is all hope and salvation of a human, this is the first step of wisdom, that we know who is our true father and follow him alone with due piety, obey him, serve him most devotedly, and that all act and care and work be placed in earning his favor.