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God in His goodness brought what exists into being out of nothing,
and has foreknowledge of what will exist in the future. If,
therefore, they were not to exist in the future, they would neither be
evil in the future nor would they be foreknown. For knowledge is of
what exists and foreknowledge is of what will surely exist in the
future. For simple being comes first and then good or evil being.
But if the very existence of those, who through the goodness of God
are in the future to exist, were to be prevented by the fact that they
were to become evil of their own choice, evil would have prevailed over
the goodness of God. Wherefore God makes all His works good, but
each becomes of its own choice good or evil. Although, then, the
Lord said, Goad were it for that man that he had never been barn,
He said it in condemnation not of His own creation but of the evil
which His own creation had acquired by his own choice and through his
own heedlessness. For the heedlessness that marks man's judgment made
His Creator's beneficence of no profit to him. It is just as if any
one, when he had obtained riches and dominion from a king, were to
lord it over his benefactor, who, when he has worsted him, will
punish him as he deserves, if he should see him keeping hold of the
sovereignty to the end.
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