Miscellanies 1.17.84

nor if vice were involuntary. Hence the one who prevents is a cause, but the one who does not prevent justly judges the choice of the soul, so that God may remain as far as possible without responsibility for vice for us. And since choice and impulse begin sins, and sometimes a mistaken supposition prevails, from which, since it is ignorance and lack of learning, we neglect to withdraw, he would fittingly punish (for having a fever is involuntary too; but when someone has a fever through his own fault and intemperance, we blame him), so too, though vice is involuntary. For no one chooses evil as evil, but, carried away by the pleasure connected with it, supposing it good, he considers it worth taking. This being so, it rests with us to be freed from ignorance and from the base and pleasurable choice, and, before these, not to assent to those deceitful impressions. The devil is called a robber and a thief because he mixed false prophets in among the prophets, like tares among the wheat. “All, then, who came before the Lord are thieves and robbers”: not simply all human beings, but all the false prophets and all who were not properly sent by him.