Meditations IX.35

Loss and change,⁵¹ they are but one. Therein doth the Universal Nature take pleasure,⁵² through whom are all things done now as they have been in like fashion from time everlasting; and to eternity shall other like things be. Why then dost thou say that all things have been evil and will remain evil to the end, and that no help has after all been found in Gods, so many as they be, to right these things, but that the fiat hath gone forth that the Universe should be bound in an unbroken chain of ill?

• 51.The play on the words cannot be kept.

  The Greek pairs apobolē, “loss,” with metabolē, “change.”

• 52.See vii. 18.