Aquinas Refines Epictetus

Grim has a running commentary on Epictetus, the Stoic.

...Now re-read Enchiridion XXVII. Aquinas' view is not Epictetus', who is centuries too early. His view of what the true good for humans is, and is not, is laid out there. The gods built the good for us into the world, and we should never doubt it -- nor should we doubt them and their goodness, either, because they built us a world in which the human good is both available and attainable. Mistaking the random acts of fate for evil is an error; just as, for Aquinas, it will prove to be an error to mistake human survival for the true good, the latter being a kind of existence that we do not have naturally but might obtain through divine grace. For Aquinas too the good is available and attainable, and via a divine action that made it so: but it is a different conception of the good....

 The entire series is worth the read.  This particular part is a refutation of Modernity's lust for eternal life on Earth, manifested in the Fauci Cult.