The Arguments of the Emperor Julian Against the Christians — page 48: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS. 25 manded that fire should tend upward, and eartin downward ; 1s it not, therefore, requisite, in order that the mandate of God may be accomplished, that the former should be light, and the other heavy? Thus, also, in a similar manner in other things. Thus, too, in divine concerns. But the reason of this 1s, because the human race is frail and corruptible. Hence, also, the works of man are corruptible and mutable, and subject to all- various revolutions. But God being eternal, it is also fit that his mandates should be eternal. And being such, they are either the natures of things, or conformable to the natures of things. For how can nature contend with the mandate of divinity? How can it fall off from this concord ? If therefore, as he ordered that there should be confusion of tongues, and that they should not accord with each other, so likewise he ordered that the political concerns of nations should be discordant; he has not only effected this by his mandate, but has rendered us naturally adapted to this dissonance. For to effect this, it would be requisite, in the first place, that there should be different natures of those whose political concerns COIN G OO) SS (CO