Library Pseudo-Clement Recognitions
Book 10, Chapter 8: Admitted Evils.
Then my father answered: But as the harmfulness of an inharmonious conjunction of elements or stars is immediately betrayed, so ought also adultery to be immediately shown that it is an evil.
Then I: First tell me this, whether, as you yourself have confessed, evils are produced from incongruous and inharmonious mixture; and then after that we shall inquire into the other matter.
Then my father said: The nature of things is as you say, my son.
Then I answered: Since, then, you wish to learn of these things, see how many things there are which no one doubts to be evils. Do you think that a fever, a fire, sedition, the fall of a house, murder, holds, racks, pains, mournings, and such like, are evils?
Then said my father: It is true, my son, that these things are evil, and very evil; or, at all events, whoever denies that they are evil, let him suffer them!
English translation by Thomas Smith, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII (eds. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886). Public domain. Digital text via New Advent Church Fathers.