Isaias 59:1

21. Unless, perchance, these things have been done without God’s knowledge, or all these things have happened without His permission; although Holy Scripture teaches the indocile, and admonishes the unmindful, where it speaks, saying, “Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to those who made a booty of him? Did not the Lord against whom they sinned, and would not walk in His ways, neither were obedient unto His law? And He has poured upon them the fury of His anger.” And elsewhere it testifies and says, “Is the Lord’s hand shortened, that it cannot save; or His ear heavy, that it cannot hear? But your iniquities separate between you and your God; and because of your sins He hath hid His face from you, that He may not have mercy.” Let us rather consider our offences, revolving our doings and the secrets of our mind; let us weigh the deserts of our conscience; let it come back upon our hea …

11. So great a terror of destruction cannot give the teaching of innocency; and in the midst of a people dying with constant havoc, nobody considers that he himself is mortal. Everywhere there is scattering, there is seizure, there is taking possession; no dissimulation about spoiling, and no delay. As if it were all lawful, as if it were all becoming, as if he who does not rob were suffering loss and wasting his own property, thus every one hastens to the rapine. Among thieves there is at any rate some modesty in their crimes. They love pathless ravines and deserted solitudes; and they do wrong in such a way, that still the crime of the wrong-doers is veiled by darkness and night. Avarice, however , rages openly, and, safe by its very boldness, exposes the weapons of its headlong craving in the light of the market-place. …

In Isaiah: “Is God’s Hand not strong to save? or has He made His ear heavy, that He cannot hear? But your sins separate between you and God; and on account of your sins He turns His face away from you, that He may not pity. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins. Moreover, your lips have spoken wickedness, and your tongue meditates unrighteousness. No one speaketh truth, nor is there true judgment: they trust in vanity, and speak emptiness, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth wickedness.” Also in the same place: “Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom is the Arm of God revealed?” Also in the same: “Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the support of my feet. …

In Hosea: “Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: because judgment is from the Lord against the inhabitants of the earth, because there is neither mercy nor truth, nor acknowledgment of God upon the earth; but cursing, and lying, and slaughter, and theft, and adultery is scattered abroad upon the earth: they mingle blood to blood. Therefore the land shall mourn, with all its inhabitants, with the beasts of the field, with the creeping things of the earth, with the birds of heaven; and the fishes of the sea shall fail: so that no man may judge, no man may refute.” Of this same thing in Isaiah: “Is not the Lord’s hand strong to save, or has He weighed down His ear that He may not hear? But your sins separate between you and God; and on account of your iniquities He turns away His face from you, lest He should pity. …

5. From this bondage, then, we are set free by the Lord alone. He who had it not, Himself delivers us from it; for He alone came without sin in the flesh. For the little ones whom you see carried in their mothers’ hands cannot yet walk, and are already in fetters; for they have received from Adam what they are loosened from by Christ. To them also, when baptized, pertains that grace which is promised by the Lord; for He only can deliver from sin who came without sin, and was made a sacrifice for sin. For you heard when the apostle was read: “We are ambassadors,” he says, “for Christ, as though God were exhorting you by us; we beseech you in Christ’s stead,”, that is, as if Christ were beseeching you, and for what? “to be reconciled unto God.” If the apostle exhorts and beseeches us to be reconciled unto God, then were we enemies to God. …

And this law the Apostle also calls spiritual saying: “But we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.” For this law is spiritual which bids us eat in the sweat of our brow that “true bread which cometh down from heaven” but that sale under sin makes us carnal. What, I ask, or whose is that sin? Doubtless Adam’s, by whose fall and, if I may so say, ruinous transaction and fraudulent bargain we were sold. For when he was led astray by the persuasion of the serpent he brought all his descendants under the yoke of perpetual bondage, as they were alienated by taking the forbidden food. For this custom is generally observed between the buyer and seller, that one who wants to make himself over to the power of another, receives from his buyer a price for the loss of his liberty, and his consignment to perpetual slavery. …