Spiritual Homilies

Extract

The prince of the world holds all men captive by earthly things, which he uses to agitate and frighten them. He causes them to stumble through vain thoughts, shameful desires and worldly ties, with which he ever allures and captivates all the sinful race of Adam. For the word that the Creator spoke to Cain: ‘A fugitive and vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth', has become the type and image of all sinners. After the Fall, Adam's race bore this image within: they were perpetually agitated by imaginations, fears, and all sorts of perturbations, desires and lusts. For the prince of this world tosses about every soul that is not born of God. For as out of the one Adam the whole human race spread over the earth, so the one evil of the passions has submerged this whole sinful race, so that the prince of evil can easily sift every one of them through their material, material, vain and exciting imaginations.