Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.5
We must now explain why God created humanity. Had the philosophers grasped this, they would have defended the truths they did discover, or at least avoided the gravest errors. This point is the sum and hinge of everything; without it, all truth slips away, and reason itself fails to cohere. If this light had dawned on them—if they had known the full mystery of man—their disputes and the whole of philosophy would never have been cut down by the sword of Academic skepticism.
Just as God did not make the world for its own sake—He has no need of its benefits—but for the sake of man who uses it, so He made man for His own sake. Epicurus asks what usefulness man could have for God, that He should create him for Himself. The answer: so there would be someone able to understand God's works, to arrange providence, to reason out actions, to perfect virtue, to admire with the senses and proclaim with the voice. The sum of all these capacities is that man may worship God. For the one who understands these things worships; the one who, with due reverence, follows the true Father and Artificer of all, measuring the virtue of His majesty by the invention, beginning, and perfection of His works.
What plainer argument could show that God made both the world and man for His own sake than this: among all living creatures, man alone is formed with eyes directed toward heaven, a face looking toward God, a countenance that seems to share a likeness with his Parent? It appears that God has lifted man from the earth to the contemplation of Himself, as with an outstretched hand. What, then, does man's worship add to a blessed God who lacks nothing? Or if God honored man so highly that He created the world for him, instructed him with wisdom, made him lord of living things, and loved him like a son, why did He make him mortal and fragile? Why did He expose the one He loved to every evil, when it would have been fitting for man to be blessed—joined to and near God, perpetual as God Himself is—for whose worship and contemplation he was formed?
Although we have touched on these points scattered through the earlier books, the present subject—the discussion of the blessed life—properly demands them. Therefore they must be explained more diligently and fully, so that God's disposition, work, and will may be known.
Latin
Reddamus nunc rationem quare hominem ipsum fecerit: quod si philosophi scissent, aut defendissent illa quae uera inuenerant aut in maximos errores non incidissent. haec enim summa, hic cardo rerum est, quem qui non tenuerit, ueritas illi omnis elabitur, hoc est denique, quod efficiat illis non quadrare rationem: quae illis si adfulsisset, si sacramentum hominis omne cognossent, numquam disputationes eorum et omnem philosophiam de transuerso Academia iugulasset. sicut ergo mundum non propter se deus fecit, quia commodis eius non indiget, sed propter hominem, qui eo utitur, ita ipsum hominem propter se. quae utilitas deo in homine, inquit Epicurus ut eum propter se faceret? scilicet ut esset qui opera eius intellegeret, qui prouidentiam disponendi, rationem faciendi, uirtutem consummandi et sensu admirari et uoce proloqui posset: quorum omnium summa haec est, ut deum colat. is enim colit qui haec intellegit, is artificem rerum omnium, is uerum patrem suum debita ueneratione prosequitur qui uirtutem maiestatis eius de suorum operum inuentione inceptione « perfectione metitur. quod planius argumentum proferri potest et mundum hominis et hominem sua causa deum fecisse, quam quod ex omnibus animantibus solus ita formatus est, ut oculi eius ad caelum directi, facies ad deum spectans, uultus cum suo parente communis sit uideaturque hominem deus quasi porrecta manu adleuatum ex humo ad contemplationem sui excitasse? quid ergo inquit deo cultus hominis confert beato et nulla re indigenti? uel si tantum honoris homini habuit, ut ipsius causa mundum fabricaret, ut instrueret eum sapientia, ut dominum uiuentium faceret eumque diligeret tamquam filium, cur mortalem fragilemque constituit? cur omnibus malis quem diligebat obiecit, cum oporteret et beatum esse hominem tamquam coniunctum ac proximum deo et perpetuum, sicut est ipse, ad quem colendum et contemplandum figuratus est? quamquam haec fere in prioribus libris sparsim docuimus, tamen quoniam: proprie id materia nunc exigit, qua de uita beata disserere propositum est, explicanda sunt ista diligentius et plenius, ut dispositio dei et opus uoluntasque noscatur.