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Quite exceptional are those who are not punished in this life, but
only afterwards. Yet that there have been some who have reached the
decrepitude of age without experiencing even the slightest sickness,
and who have had uninterrupted enjoyment of life, I know both from
report and from my own observation. However, the very life we mortals
lead is itself all punishment, for it is all temptation, as the
Scriptures declare, where it is written, "Is not the life of man
upon earth a temptation?" For ignorance is itself no slight
punishment, or want of culture, which it is with justice thought so
necessary to escape, that boys are compelled, under pain of severe
punishment, to learn trades or letters; and the learning to which they
are driven by punishment is itself so much of a punishment to them,
that they sometimes prefer the pain that drives them to the pain to
which they are driven by it. And who would not shrink from the
alternative, and elect to die, if it were proposed to him either to
suffer death or to be again an infant? Our infancy, indeed,
introducing us to this life not with laughter but with tears, seems
unconsciously to predict the ills we are to encounter. Zoroaster alone
is said to have laughed when he was born, and that unnatural omen
portended no good to him. For he is said to have been the inventor of
magical arts, though indeed they were unable to secure to him even the
poor felicity of this present life against the assaults of his enemies.
For, himself king of the Bactrians, he was conquered by Ninus king
of the Assyrians. In short, the words of Scripture, "An heavy
yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their
mother's womb till the day that they return to the mother of all
things,", these words so infallibly find fulfillment, that even the
little ones, who by the layer of regeneration have been freed from the
bond of original sin in which alone they were held, yet suffer many
ills, and in some instances are even exposed to the assaults of evil
spirits. But let us not for a moment suppose that this suffering is
prejudicial to their future happiness, even though it has so increased
as to sever soul from body, and to terminate their life in that early
age.
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