For so Adam
in Paradise sinned, and hid himself from the face of God. As long, then,
as he had the sound heart of a pure conscience, he rejoiced at the
presence of God; when that eye was wounded by sin, he began to dread the
divine light, he fled back into the darkness, and the thick covert of
trees, flying from the truth, and anxious for the shade.
VII. Therefore, my brethren, since we too are born of him, and as the
apostle says, "In Adam all die"; for we were all at first two persons;
if we were loath to obey the physician, that we might not be sick; let
us obey Him now, that we may be delivered from sickness. The Physician
gave us precepts, when we were whole; He gave us precepts that we might
not need a physician. "They that are whole," He saith, "need not a
physician, but they that are sick." When whole, we despised these
precepts, and by experience have felt how to our own destruction we
despised His precepts. Now we are sick, we are in distress, we are on
the bed of weakness; yet let us not despair. For because we could not
come to the Physician, He hath vouchsafed to come Himself to us. Tho
despised by man when he was whole, He did not despise him when he was
stricken.
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