God exercises a moral government; under it the good are happy, while misfortunes happen to the wicked.

According to Epictetus, God is the father of men; Antoninus exults in the beautiful arrangement of all things.

The earlier Stoics, Zeno and Chrysippus, entertained high reverence for the divination, prophecy, and omens that were generally current in the ancient world.

They considered that these were the methods whereby the gods were graciously pleased to make known beforehand revelations of their foreordained purposes.

(Herein lay one among the marked points of contrast between Stoics and Epicureans.) They held this foreordination even to the length of fatalism, and made the same replies, as have been given in modern times, to the difficulty of reconciling it with the existence of evil, and with the apparent condition of the better and the worse individuals among mankind.