Against Celsus 4.63

I do not know how, while positing providence (at least as far as the words of this book go), he says that evils are neither more nor fewer but, as it were, fixed in number, doing away with the finest doctrine, that vice and evils are unlimited and by their own nature boundless. And it seems to follow from the claim that evils neither have been nor are nor will be fewer or more, that, just as according to those who hold the world to be indestructible the balance of the elements comes about by providence, which does not allow any one of them to gain the upper hand, so that the world may not perish, so, as it were, some providence presides over evils, which happen to be just so many, so that they become neither more nor fewer. Celsus's account of evils is refuted in another way too, by the philosophers who have examined questions of good and evil, and who have shown from history as well that at first courtesans hired themselves out to any who wished outside the city, wearing masks; then later, growing contemptuous, they laid the masks aside, and, not being permitted by the laws to enter the cities, they stayed outside them; but as corruption grew day by day, they dared to enter the cities too. Chrysippus says this in his Introduction to Goods and Evils. From this, since evils become more and fewer, one can gather that those called ambiguous once stood in public, suffering and inflicting outrage and serving the lusts of those who came in, but that later the market officials drove them out. And about countless things that have entered human life from the spreading of vice one could say that formerly they did not exist. At any rate, the most ancient histories, though they accuse sinners of countless things, do not know of those who commit unspeakable acts.