Miscellanies 7.10.59

That is why the apostle too says, “I will benefit you nothing unless I speak to you either in revelation or in knowledge or in prophecy or in teaching.” Yet some things are done rightly even by those who do not know, but not according to reason, as in the case of courage. For some, who are spirited by nature and have then nourished this without reason, rush irrationally at most things and act like the courageous, so that at times they achieve the same results, such as enduring tortures with ease; but not from the same cause as the one who knows, nor with the same aim, not even “if they give up their whole body,” for “they do not have love,” as the apostle says, the love born of knowledge. Every action done by one who understands, then, is right action, and every action done by one who does not understand is wrong action, even if it holds firm, since he is not courageous from reasoning, nor does he direct his action to any useful end among the things that lead to virtue and flow from virtue. The same argument applies to the other virtues, and so, by analogy, to piety too. Not only, then, is our one who knows such in holiness; the promises he makes about the rest of his conduct also follow his understanding piety. For our present purpose is to describe the life of the one who knows, not to set out the theory of doctrines, which we will expound later at the proper time, while keeping the order.