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 harmful things, which produces gnawing cares, disquiet, griefs, fears, wild joys, quarrels, lawsuits, wars, treasons, angers, hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft, robbery, treachery, 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, slanders, plots, falsehoods, false testimonies, 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, but 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, showing itself even in infancy, and with what excess of foolish desires, beginning to appear in boyhood, man comes into this life, so that, if he were 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 is the meaning of those many kinds of threats which are used to restrain the folly of children? What is the meaning of tutors, teachers, the birch, the strap, the cane, the schooling which Scripture says must be given a child, “beating him on the sides so that he does not grow stubborn,”⁠a and it becomes hardly possible or not possible at all to subdue him? Why all these punishments, except to overcome ignorance and restrain 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 corrupted nature inclines and tends to by its own weight, and what help it needs if it is to be delivered? Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which avoid 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 accidents 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 viciousness 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 more intense 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 sides 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. But, 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? So that no one might think so, even baptized infants, who are certainly unsurpassed in innocence, are sometimes so tormented that God, who permits it, teaches us by this to lament the calamities of this life, and to desire the happiness 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 killed for the purpose? Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers to eat their own children, incredibly savage as it seems? Finally, 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 cannot distinguish them from realities! How wretchedly false appearances derange 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 on earth there is no escape, except through the grace of the Savior Christ, our God and Lord. The very name Jesus shows this, for it means Savior; and He saves us especially from passing out of this life into a more wretched and eternal state, which is a death rather than a life. For in this life, though holy men and holy pursuits give us great consolations, the blessings which men crave are not always bestowed on them, so that religion is not practiced for the sake of these temporal advantages, while it ought rather to be practiced for the sake of that other life from which all evil is excluded. Therefore, also, grace aids 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 even those against whom we are disputing have been compelled to acknowledge, in some way, 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 is sufficiently clear from this that the human race has been condemned to pay this penalty of wretchedness. And just 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.