But why do we dwell so long on these diseases only? All the creatures of God together as one mighty army are against us, and all but armed for our destruction. How many are there, whom the fire and the water destroy? How much peril threatens men from ferocious and venomous beasts and other noxious creatures? Nor do they infest our bodies only, but our food of every kind, intended for our nourishment. Not to mention that we ourselves also rush upon each other in hostile slaughter and murder. Just as if there were not pestilences and destructions enough besides, which threatened us on every hand. And if you look at the general pursuits and objects of men, what is this life of ours but a daily scene of contention, deception, snare, rapine and murder? And all this in addition to those evils and calamities which hang over our heads from the external things we have mentioned. My belief is that all these things did not exist before the Deluge; or, if they did exist, were not so numerous or so heavy and severe as they now are found to be. But as the sins of men increased, so as we have said their punishments have increased also. The calamities inflicted on Adam therefore were light in comparison to those inflicted on us. For the nearer the world approaches its end, with the heavier punishments and calamities is it visited. To all this evil is added that greater evil still, that the more the world is stricken, the more it hardens its forehead and becomes stupefied as it were and insensible of its punishment altogether, as it is written in the Proverbs, "They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not hurt; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again," Prov. 23:35. This blindness and obduracy exceed all the above calamities of the body. Is not our state then, I ask, marvelous and miserable? The traces of the wrath of God, which our sin has deserved, are first of all bound up as it were in our bodies; and next the same wrath of God is beheld resting on the earth and on all creatures, and yet all these awful evils are disregarded by us, and our minds are filled with security and indolent unconcern. For what are the thorns, what the thistles, what the water, what the fire, what the caterpillars, what the flies, what the fleas, what the bugs, what the lice; what, I say, are all these together and separately, but so many messengers which continually preach to us of sin and of the wrath of God on its account? For before sin entered into the world those living evils had no existence; or if they were in existence, they harmed not nor annoyed.