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For God would never have created any, I do not say angel, but even
man, whose future wickedness He foreknew, unless He had equally
known to what uses in behalf of the good He could turn him, thus
embellishing, the course of the ages, as it were an exquisite poem set
off with antitheses. For what are called antitheses are among the most
elegant of the ornaments of speech. They might be called in Latin
"oppositions," or, to speak more accurately, "contrapositions;"
but this word is not in common use among us, though the Latin, and
indeed the languages of all nations, avail themselves of the same
ornaments of style. In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians the
Apostle Paul also makes a graceful use of antithesis, in that place
where he says, "By the armor of righteousness on the right hand and
on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report:
as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as
dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as
having nothing, and yet possessing all things." As, then, these
oppositions of contraries lend beauty to the language, so the beauty of
the course of this world is achieved by the opposition of contraries,
arranged, as it were, by an eloquence not of words, but of things.
This is quite plainly stated in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, in this
way: "Good is set against evil, and life against death: so is the
sinner against the godly. So look upon all the works of the Most
High, and these are two and two, one against another."
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