On the Government of God by Salvian 5th C. CE

"The De gubernatione (On the Government of God), Salvian's greatest work, was published after the capture of Litorius at Toulouse (439), to which he plainly alludes in vii. 40, and after the Vandal conquest of Carthage in the same year (vi. 12), but before Attila's invasion (451), as Salvian speaks of the Huns, not as enemies of the empire, but as serving in the Roman armies (vii. 9). The words "proximum bellum" seem to denote a year very soon after 439.

In this work, which furnishes a valuable if prejudiced description of life in 5th century Gaul, Salvian deals with the same problem that had moved the eloquence of Augustine and Orosius: why were these miseries falling on the empire? Could it be, as the Pagans said, because the age had forsaken its old Gods? Or was it, as the semi-Pagan creed of some Christians taught, that God did not constantly overrule the world he had created?"

-summary taken from wikipedia

 

Source:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/salvian_gov_00_intro.htm