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| Of the Temporary Punishments of This Life to Which the Human Condition is Subject.
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Chapter 14.—Of the Temporary
Punishments of This Life to Which the Human Condition is
Subject.
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?”1521
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.1522
| 1522 Compare Goldsmith’s saying,
“We begin life in tears, and every day tells us
why.” |
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,”1523
—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.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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