Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.15

A passage to the second argument for constancy, which is taken from necessity. The force and violence thereof, this necessity is considered two ways, and first in the things themselves.

"This is a sure brazen target against all outward accidents. This is that gold armor wherewith being fenced, Plato wills us to fight against chance and fortune, to be subject to God, and in all events to cast our mind upon that great mind of the world. I mean Providence, whose holy and happy troops having orderly trained forth. 

"I will now bring out another band under the banner of necessity. A band valiant, strong, and hard as iron, which I may fitly term the thundering legion. The power of this is stern and invincible, which tames and subdues all things. Wherefore, Lipsius, I marvel if you withstand it. 

"Thales being asked what was strongest of all things, answered, 'necessity', for it overcomes all things. And to that purpose there is an old saying, though not so warily spoken of, that the gods cannot constrain necessity. This necessity I join next unto Providence, because it is near kin to it, or rather born of it. For from God and his decrees necessity springs: and it is nothing else, as the Greek philosopher defines it, but a firm ordinance and immutable power of Providence. 

"That it has a stroke in all public evils that befall, I will prove two ways: from the nature of things themselves and from destiny. And first from the things, in that it is a natural property to all things created, to fall into mutability and alteration: as unto iron cleaves naturally a consuming rust, to wood a gnawing worm, and so a wasting rottenness. Even so to living creatures, cities, and kingdoms, there be certain inward causes of their own decay. 

"Look upon all things high and low, great and small, made with hand, or composed by the mind, they always have decayed, and ever shall. And as the rivers with a continual swift course run into the sea, so all human things through this conduit of wastings and calamities slide to the mark of their desolation. Death and destruction is this mark, and the means to come thither are plague, war, and slaughters. 

"So that if death be necessary, then the means in that respect are as necessary. Which to the end you may the better perceive by examples, I will not refuse in conceit and imagination to wander a whiles with you through the great university of the world."