As therefore woman endures the punishment of sin in her body, a punishment she is mercifully enabled to bear, with which she is afflicted in the bringing forth of children; so the husband has to endure his punishment in the government of his household; while, with all kinds of difficulty, labor and distress, he rules his house and provides for his family. And justly so; for it was on his own account that the field was cursed. Whereas before he sinned no part of the earth was either barren or corrupt, but all places in it were marvelously fertile and productive; but now, on the contrary, not only is it in many parts entirely barren, but even those parts, which are otherwise fruitful, are deformed and defiled with tares, weeds, briers and thorns. And this calamity is indeed great, and might well drive Adam himself and us all to choose strangling rather than life. But the whole mighty evil is rendered endurable by the promise of the woman's "Seed," by which the punishment of eternal death, which is infinitely greater than all this punishment of life, is wholly taken out of the way. That which next follows, "In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life," are words quite easy to understand. For who knows not how laborious the life of an husbandman is. It is not enough that he prepare the ground for receiving the seed, which is attended with great and various labor; but even when the corn is yet in the blade, each single day almost demands of him its necessary labor and toil; not to mention those almost infinite hindrances of weather, noxious vermin, etc., all which greatly augment his pain, labor and suffering. Whereas before the sin of the fall, not only were there no such evils and hindrances in existence, but the earth, had Adam not sinned, would have brought forth all things quicker than the hope or expectation of man, as it were, "unsown and unplowed." Moreover this calamity, which sin brought into the creation, was in many respects lighter and more tolerable in their state before the Flood than in the condition of the world which followed. In the antediluvian state of the curse no other mention is made than of thorns, and thistles, and labor, and sweat; but now we experience numberless other additional evils. How many diseases and pestilential injuries are inflicted on the standing corn, on the plants of pulse, on trees, and finally on all the productions of the earth? How many evils are wrought by destructive birds and noxious caterpillars? Add to these evils, extremes of cold and frost, thunderings, lightnings, excessive wet, winds, rivers bursting their banks, fissures of the earth, earthquakes, etc. Of none of these is any mention made in the state of things under the curse before the Deluge. My firm belief is therefore that as the sins of men increased the punishments of those sins increased also; and that all such punishments and evils were added to the original curse of the earth.