Miscellanies 7.16.101

At any rate, nothing is plainer than that those who understand affirm confidently what they know, as do those who are conceited about what they suppose, so far as confident affirmation without demonstration goes. At any rate, they despise and laugh at one another. And it happens that the same thought is held in the highest honor by some and convicted of madness by others. And yet we have learned that pleasure, which is to be assigned to the gentiles, is one thing; strife, which is to be attributed to the heresies, another; joy, which is to be claimed for the church, another; and gladness, which is to be granted to the one who truly knows, yet another. And as, if someone attends to Ischomachus, he will make him a farmer; Lampis, a shipowner; Charidemus, a general; Simon, a horseman; Perdix, a tradesman; Crobylus, a cook; Archelaus, a dancer; Homer, a poet; Pyrrho, a disputer; Demosthenes, an orator; Chrysippus, a logician; Aristotle, a natural scientist; and Plato, a philosopher; so the one who obeys the Lord and has followed the prophecy given through him is made perfectly complete after the image of the Teacher, a god going about in flesh. Those, then, fall from this height who do not follow God wherever he leads; and he leads according to the “God-breathed Scriptures.” Though the things human beings do are countless, there are roughly two sources of all sin, ignorance and weakness (both in our power, in those who neither wish to learn nor, again, to master desire); through the first people judge badly, and through the second they are not strong enough to follow what has been judged rightly. For neither could someone deceived in his judgment act well, even if he were fully able to do what he knew; nor could one able to judge what is right show himself blameless in his deeds if he is weak.