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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
[Chapter] I Reasons for our meditation on this work
8. The natural law of the nations was certainly born with the common customs of the nations. Furthermore, there has never been a nation of atheists in the world, because all nations began in some single religion. The roots of these religions all sprang from man's natural desire for eternal life, a desire, common to human nature, which arises from a common sense, concealed in the depths of the human mind, that the human soul is immortal. But however hidden this cause, its effect is equally evident: that, when faced with the final afflictions of death, we wish for a force superior to nature by which to overcome them, a force that is to be found only in a God who is not identical with, but superior to, nature herself, i.e. an infinite and eternal mind. And when men stray from this God, they become curious about the future.
9. This curiosity, which is forbidden by nature, for [such knowledge of the future] belongs to a God who is an infinite and eternal mind, precipitated the fall of the two great originators of mankind. Accordingly God both founded the true religion of the Hebrews upon worship of His infinite and eternal Providence and punished the first authors of the human race for their desire to know the future, thus condemning the whole race to toil, pain and death.
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