Lactantius — Divine Institutes 6.7
For all those who are counted wise through others' confessed folly, led by the appearance of virtue, seize shadows and images — nothing true. That happens because that lying road which bears toward the west has many tracks on account of the variety of pursuits and disciplines that are unlike and diverse in human life. For just as that road of wisdom has something like folly, which we showed in the preceding book, so this one, though it is wholly of folly, has something like wisdom, which those who understand public folly snatch up: and as it has open vices, so it has something that seems like virtue; as it has open crime, so a certain image and look of justice. For how could the forerunner of that road whose whole force and power is in deceiving lead everyone into fraud unless he displayed things like the truth to humans? For God, so that that immortal secret of his might be hidden, set on his own road things humans would scorn as evil and base, so that turned from wisdom and truth, which they were seeking without any guide, they would fall into the very thing they wished to avoid and flee.
And so he showed that road of ruin and death as many-branched, either because there are many kinds of life or because there are many gods who are worshiped. Its guide, a deceiver and crafty, so that there seems some difference of false and true, of evil and good, leads the luxurious one way and those called thrifty another, the unskilled one way and the learned another, the idle one way and the vigorous another, fools one way and philosophers another — and those not by one track. For those who do not refuse pleasures or riches he separates only a little from this public and crowded road; but those who want to follow virtue or profess contempt of things he drags through certain broken precipices. Yet all those routes that show the look of goods are not other roads, but turnoffs and paths which seem indeed to break rightward from that common road, yet are all brought back to the same and to one exit under the very end. For there that guide joins all where the good ought to have been separated from the wicked, the strong from the idle, the wise from fools — namely in the cult of the gods, in which he, because they were fools without any distinction, cuts them all down with one sword and hurls them into death.
But this road, which is of truth and of wisdom and of virtue and of justice — of all of which there is one fountain, one force, one seat — is also simple, so that with equal minds and highest concord we may follow and worship one God; and narrow, because virtue is given to fewer; and steep, because one cannot reach the good that is highest and lofty except with utmost difficulty and labor.
Latin
Nam illi omnes qui per aliorum confessam stultitiam sapientes existimantur, specie uirtutis inducti umbras et imagines adprehendunt, nihil uerum. quod ea fit ratione, quoniam uia illa mendax, quae fert ad occasum, multos tramites habet propter studiorum et disciplinarum uarietatem, quae sunt in uita hominum dissimiles atque diuersae. nam sicut uia illa sapientiae habet aliquid simile stultitiae, quod libro praecedente monstrauimus, ita haec cum sit tota stultitiae, habet aliquid simile sapientiae, quod adripiant ii qui stultitiam publicam intellegunt: et ut habet uitia manifesta, sic habet aliquid quod simile uideatur esse uirtuti, ut habet apertum scelus, sic imaginem quandam speciemque iustitiae. quomodo enim praecursor eius uiae cuius uis et potestas omnis in fallendo est, uniuersos in fraudem posset inducere, nisi ueri similia hominibus ostentaret? deus enim, ut immortale illud arcanum eius in operto esset, posuit in uia sua quae homines pro malis et turpibus aspernarentur, ut auersi a sapientia et ueritate, quam sine ullo duce requirebant, in id ipsum inciderent quod uitare ac fugere cupiebant.
itaque illam perditionis ac mortis uiaui multiplicem ostendit, uel quod multa sunt genera uitae uel quod dii multi qui coluntur. huius dux praeuaricator ac subdolus, ut uideatur esse discrimen aliquod falsi et ueri, mali et boni, alia ducit luxuriosos alia eos qui frugi appellantur, alia inperitos alia doctos, alia inertes alia strenuos, alia stultos alia philosophos, et eos quidem non uno tramite. illos enim qui aut uoluptates aut diuitias non refugiunt, ab hac publica et celebri uia modice segregat, eos autem qui aut uirtutem sequi uolunt aut contemptum rerum profitentur, per confragosa quaedam praecipitia trahit. sed tamen illa omnia itinera quae speciem bonorum ostentant non sunt aliae uiae, sed deuerticula et semitae, quae uidentur quidem ab illa communi dextrouersum separari, ad eandem tamen et ad unum omnes exitum sub ipso fine referuntur. ibi enim dux ille coniungit omnes ubi opus fuerat bonos a malis, fortes ab inertibus, sapientes a stultis separari, in deorum scilicet cultu, in quo ille uniuersos, quia sine ullo discrimine stulti fuerunt, uno mucrone iugulat et praecipitat in mortem.
haec autem uia, quae est ueritatis et sapientiae et uirtutis et usae, quorum omnium fons unus est, una uis, una sedes, et simplex est, quo paribus animis summaque concordia unum sequamur et colamus deum, et angusta, quoniam paucioribus uirtus data est, et ardua, quoniam ad bonum quod est summum atque sublime nisi cum summa difficultate ac labore non potest perueniri.