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That the whole human race has been condemned in its first origin, this
life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the host of
cruel ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by the profound
and dreadful ignorance which produces all the errors that enfold the
children of Adam, and from which no man can be delivered without
toil, pain, and fear? Is it not proved by his love of so many vain
and hurtful things, which produces gnawing cares, disquiet, griefs,
fears, wild joys, quarrels, lawsuits, wars, treasons, angers,
hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft, robbery, perfidy,
pride, ambition, envy, murders, parricides, cruelty, ferocity,
wickedness, luxury, insolence, impudence, shamelessness,
fornications, adulteries, incests, and the numberless uncleannesses
and unnatural acts of both sexes, which it is shameful so much as to
mention; sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, perjuries, oppression
of the innocent, calumnies, plots, falsehoods, false witnessings,
unrighteous judgments, violent deeds, plunderings, and whatever
similar wickedness has found its way into the lives of men, though it
cannot find its way into the conception of pure minds? These are
indeed the crimes of wicked men, yet they spring from that root of
error and misplaced love which is born with every son of Adam. For
who is there that has not observed with what profound ignorance,
manifesting itself even in infancy, and with what superfluity of
foolish desires, beginning to appear in boyhood, man comes into this
life, so that, were he left to live as he pleased, and to do whatever
he pleased, he would plunge into all, or certainly into many of those
crimes and iniquities which I mentioned, and could not mention?
But because God does not wholly desert those whom He condemns, nor
shuts up in His anger His tender mercies, the human race is
restrained by law and instruction, which keep guard against the
ignorance that besets us, and oppose the assaults of vice, but are
themselves full of labor and sorrow. For what mean those multifarious
threats which are used to restrain the folly of children? What mean
pedagogues, masters, the birch, the strap, the cane, the schooling
which Scripture says must be given a child, "beating him on the sides
lest he wax stubborn," and it be hardly possible or not possible at
all to subdue him? Why all these punishments, save to overcome
ignorance and bridle evil desires, these evils with which we come into
the world? For why is it that we remember with difficulty, and
without difficulty forget? learn with difficulty, and without
difficulty remain ignorant? are diligent with difficulty, and without
difficulty are indolent? Does not this show what vitiated nature
inclines and tends to by its own weight, and what succor it needs if it
is to be delivered? Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are
vices which shun labor, since labor, though useful, is itself a
punishment.
But, besides the punishments of childhood, without which there would
be no learning of what the parents wish, and the parents rarely wish
anything useful to be taught, who can describe, who can conceive the
number and severity of the punishments which afflict the human race,
pains which are not only the accompaniment of the wickedness of godless
men, but are a part of the human condition and the common misery, what
fear and what grief are caused by bereavement and mourning, by losses
and condemnations, by fraud and falsehood, by false suspicions, and
all the crimes and wicked deeds of other men? For at their hands we
suffer robbery, captivity, chains, imprisonment, exile, torture,
mutilation, loss of sight, the violation of chastity to satisfy the
lust of the oppressor, and many other dreadful evils. What numberless
casualties threaten our bodies from without, extremes of heat and
cold, storms, floods, inundations, lightning, thunder, hail,
earthquakes, houses falling; or from the stumbling, or shying, or
vice of horses; from countless poisons. in fruits, water, air,
animals; from the painful or even deadly bites of wild animals; from
the madness which a mad dog communicates, so that even the animal which
of all others is most gentle and friendly to its own master, becomes an
object of intenser fear than a lion or dragon, and the man whom it has
by chance infected with this pestilential contagion becomes so rabid,
that his parents, wife, children, dread him more than any wild
beast!
What disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! What
man can go out of his own house without being exposed on all hands to
unforeseen accidents? Returning home sound in limb, he slips on his
own doorstep, breaks his leg, and never recovers. What can seem
safer than a man sitting in his chair? Eli the priest fell from his,
and broke his neck. How many accidents do farmers, or rather all
men, fear that the crops may suffer from the weather, or the soil, or
the ravages of destructive animals? Commonly they feel safe when the
crops are gathered and housed. Yet, to my certain knowledge, sudden
floods have driven the laborers away, and swept the barns clean of the
finest harvest. Is innocence a sufficient protection against the
various assaults of demons? That no man might think so, even baptized
infants, who are certainly unsurpassed in innocence, are sometimes so
tormented, that God, who permits it, teaches us hereby to bewail the
calamities of this life, and to desire the felicity of the life to
come. As to bodily diseases, they are so numerous that they cannot
all be contained even in medical books. And in very many, or almost
all of them, the cures and remedies are themselves tortures, so that
men are delivered from a pain that destroys by a cure that pains. Has
not the madness of thirst driven men to drink human urine, and even
their own? Has not hunger driven men to eat human flesh, and that the
flesh not of bodies found dead, but of bodies slain for the purpose?
Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers to eat their own
children, incredibly savage as it seems? In fine, sleep itself,
which is justly called repose, how little of repose there sometimes is
in it when disturbed with dreams and visions; and with what terror is
the wretched mind overwhelmed by the appearances of things which are so
presented, and which, as it were so stand out before the senses, that
we can not distinguish them from realities! How wretchedly do false
appearances distract men in certain diseases! With what astonishing
variety of appearances are even healthy men sometimes deceived by evil
spirits, who produce these delusions for the sake of perplexing the
senses of their victims, if they cannot succeed in seducing them to
their side!
From this hell upon earth there is no escape, save through the grace
of the Saviour Christ, our God and Lord. The very name Jesus
shows this, for it means Saviour; and He saves us especially from
passing out of this life into a more wretched and eternal state, which
is rather a death than a life. For in this life, though holy men and
holy pursuits afford us great consolations, yet the blessings which men
crave are not invariably bestowed upon them, lest religion should be
cultivated for the sake of these temporal advantages, while it ought
rather to be cultivated for the sake of that other life from which all
evil is excluded. Therefore, also, does grace aid good men in the
midst of present calamities, so that they are enabled to endure them
with a constancy proportioned to their faith. The world's sages
affirm that philosophy contributes something to this, that philosophy
which, according to Cicero, the gods have bestowed in its purity only
on a few men. They have never given, he says, nor can ever give, a
greater gift to men. So that even those against whom we are disputing
have been compelled to acknowledge, in some fashion, that the grace of
God is necessary for the acquisition, not, indeed, of any
philosophy, but of the true philosophy. And if the true philosophy,
this sole support against the miseries of this life, has been given by
Heaven only to a few, it sufficiently appears from this that the human
race has been condemned to pay this penalty of wretchedness. And as,
according to their acknowledgment, no greater gift has been bestowed by
God, so it must be believed that it could be given only by that God
whom they themselves recognize as greater than all the gods they
worship.
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