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| 1376 |
He
himself, the Lord almighty, will begin to speak as if he were talking
to a single one, and yet he means them all, the inordinately sinful
multitude: |
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| 1379 |
'Behold,
I first made you, man, with my hands and gave you intelligence. Of
clay I formed limbs for you. I gave you a living soul. I honoured
you above all creatures. I brought it about that you had a figure
and form resembling myself. I gave you too an abundance of powers
and prosperity throughout each spacious continent. You knew no share
of sorrow or of gloom that you had to suffer - nor did you know gratitude
for this. When I had created you so beautiful and made you so pleasing
and had granted you prosperity so that you might rule over the creatures
in the world and when I set you upon the lovely earth to enjoy the
radiant luxuriance of Paradise agleam with colours, then you were
unwilling to abide by the word of life, but rather you broke my behest
at the word of your slayer. To that treacherous fiend, that destructive
destroyer, you listened more than to your Creator. Here I will leave
out that old account of how in the first places you resolved upon
evil and by your wicked actions lost what I had granted you to your
advantage. When I had vouchsafed you so many benefits and there seemed
to you in your heart too little happiness in all theses things if
you might not possess and abundance of power commensurate with God,
then to the devils' satisfaction you were cast out from that state
of joy far afield, a stranger. The beauty of Paradise, the homeland
of your spirits, you had perforce to forgo, wretched, miserable, parted
from all privileges and pleasures; and then you were driven into this
gloomy world where you have since suffered physical afflictions for
a long time, pain and heavy toil and dark death, and after your going
hence you were constrained to sink abject into hell, devoid of helpers. |
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| 1414 |
'When
I repented that the work of my hands should pass into the power of
the devils, that the issue of mankind should see mortality and by
constrained to venture upon an unknown dwelling-place and painful
experiences, then I myself came down as a child into a mother, though
her virginity remained wholly intact, and I was born, I alone, as
a comfort to the people. By human hands I was wrapped and clad in
a pauper's coverings, and then I was laid in the darkness wrapped
in drab clothes. See! this I suffered for the world's sake. Little
I seemed to the sons of men; I lay on the hard rock, an infant in
its crib. By this I meant to put far from you death and the scorching
noxiousness of hell, so that you might shine holy and blessed in the
life everlasting, because I suffered the hardship. |
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