“I think enough evidence has been brought together, to prove that the one and true God, made known by the Christian Faith, created the world and His creature as He wished, and that He has ordered and directed it through many things, of which it has not seen the purpose, and has ordained it for one event, declared through One; and likewise has made manifest His power and patience by arguments manifold. Whereat, I perceive, straitened and anxious minds have stumbled, to think of so much patience joined to so great power. For, if He was able to create the world, and establish its peace, and impart to it a knowledge of His worship and Himself, what was the need of so great and (as they say) so hurtful patience, exerted to the end that at last, through the errors, slaughters and the toils of men, there should result what might rather have arisen in the beginning by His virtue, which you preach? To whom I can truly reply: the human race from the beginning was so created and appointed that living under religion with peace without labour, by the fruit of obedience it might merit eternity; but it abused the Creator’s goodness, turned liberty into wilful licence, and through disdain fell into forgetfulness; now the patience of God is just and doubly just, operating that this disdain might not wholly ruin those whom He wished to spare, but might be reduced through labours; and also so that He might always hold out guidance although to an ignorant creature, to whom if penitent He would mercifully restore the means of grace.” Such was the point of view and such the motives of this book, which was to be _par excellence_ the source of ancient history for the Middle Ages. But, concerned chiefly with the Gentile nations, Orosius has few palpable miracles to tell. The miracle lies in God’s _ineffabilis ordinatio_ of events, and especially in marvellous chronological parallels shown in the histories of nations, for our edification. Likewise for mediaeval men these ineffable chronological correspondences (which never existed in fact) were to be evidence of God’s providential guidance of the world. Some thirty years after Orosius wrote, a priest of Marseilles, Salvian by name, composed a different sort of treatise, with a like object of demonstrating the righteous validity of God’s providential ordering of affairs, especially in those troubled times of barbarian invasion through which the Empire then was passing. The book declared its purpose in its title--_De gubernatione Dei_.[88] Its tenor is further elucidated by the title bestowed upon it by a contemporary: _De praesenti_ (_Dei_) _judicio_. It is famous for the pictures (doubtless overwrought) which it gives of the low state of morals among the Roman provincials, and of the comparative decency of the barbarians.