Miscellanies 2.7.34

Let us see what fearful things the law announces. If they are the things between virtue and vice, such as poverty, disease, lack of reputation, low birth, and the like, the laws of cities are praised for holding these out, and this view is in harmony with the Peripatetics, who introduce three kinds of goods and reckon their opposites to be evils. But the law given to us commands us to flee what are truly evils: adultery, licentiousness, the corruption of boys, ignorance, injustice, disease of the soul, death, not the death that separates the soul from the body, but the one that separates the soul from the truth. For these vices are truly terrible and fearful, and the actions that come from them. “Not unjustly are nets spread for birds,” say the divine oracles; “for they themselves, sharing in blood, treasure up evils for themselves.” How, then, is the law still said by certain heresies not to be good, when they cry out the apostle's words, “For through the law comes the knowledge of sin”? To them we say: the law did not make sin, but showed it. For by commanding what must be done it exposed what must not be done. And it is the mark of a good thing to teach what saves and to point out what harms, to counsel the use of the one and to command flight from the other.