Bellarmine · De Controversiis · On the Loss of Grace · Book VI: The Punishments of Original Sin
Chapter 12: On the miseries of men as to the body
Our translation, from the Latin of the Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1870–74), vol. V, De Amissione Gratiae et Statu Peccati, Book VI. The Latin source text is public domain; this English rendering is released with the site. Scripture quotations follow Bellarmine's Vulgate citations, rendered in Douay-Rheims wording where he quotes exactly. Click “Show the Latin” for the original (raw OCR of the scan; scanning errors remain — the scan itself is the authority).
Now indeed the corporal miseries in this valley of tears are plainly innumerable — which yet would have been none, had not sin opened the way to them.
First, there are so many kinds of diseases that not even in the books of the physicians are they all comprehended.
Then, in many of them — indeed plainly in all — even the helps and medicines themselves are torments: fasting, drugs, cuttings, burnings; so that many often judge the disease a lighter evil than the medicine.
Third, to how great a madness the want of food and drink sometimes brings men, many examples both in sacred and in profane authors declare: “Has not,” says Augustine, book 22 On the City of God, chapter 22, “the monstrous heat of thirst brought men to this, that they drank even human urine, or even their own? Has not hunger brought them to this, that they could not abstain from the flesh of men — and not men found dead, but killed by themselves for this purpose, and not any strangers whatsoever, but even sons whom their mothers consumed with incredible cruelty, which raging hunger wrought?”
Fourth, for warding off want so great labor is necessary that Scripture testifies it was said to the first man: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, Genesis 3. And again in another place, for the same cause, man is said to be born to labor as to a certain office proper to him, as the bird is born to fly, Job 5. And so, as the misery of disease is driven out through another misery, often a graver one — that is, through medicines — so also the evil of want is tempered, neither more briefly nor more lightly, through the evil of labor. It was not difficult for God, who feeds the birds of heaven though they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, to bring it about that men also should find their sustenance without labor; but he willed, as a punishment of sin, that men, as Augustine speaks in the place noted, “should not be rescued from a penal destruction except by a penal help.”
Fifth, there is added the brevity of life. For since men arrive at the knowledge of things — which is the proper operation of man — only in a long time and with great labor, it seemed equitable that they should live very long; otherwise it would come to pass that almost none would attain the end proper and natural to him. Yet contrariwise the life of man is most short. For very many depart before they have begun to come to maturity; and they who live longest by no means arrive at the age of stags and crows. Wherefore there were not wanting among the heathen those who complained of nature, that she had given a longer life to crows than to men. Another said that he was leaving life just when he was beginning to learn and to lead the life proper to man. Another begins his book with these words: “Art is long, life short” — as though he would say that human nature is not fairly dealt with, which on account of the brevity of life cannot attain the arts proper to itself. The divine Scripture also is not silent that the life of men is most short: Man born of a woman, says Job, chapter 14, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries; who cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow. And the Prophet Isaias, chapter 40, and the Apostle Peter, in the first epistle, chapter 1, did not hesitate to compare man to grass, which at the first ray of the sun is dried up and falls.
There is added, last of all, the continual fear of imminent death. For although human life is very bitter, yet destruction seems still more bitter: Doth bitter death separate in this manner? said that one. And the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 5: We groan, says he, being burthened; because we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life. And to the Hebrews, chapter 2, he says that Christ through his own death destroyed him who had the empire of death — that is, the devil — that he might deliver them who through the fear of death were all their life subject to servitude. The soul certainly is immortal; and being the natural form of the body, it without doubt desires an immortal body. Accordingly death has rightly been named the enemy of nature, and the last of all terrible things.
Show the Latin (Vives edition, OCR)
CAPUT XII. De miseriis hominum quoad corpus. Jam vero corporales miseriae in hac lacry- marum valle, plane innumerabiles sunt, quae tamen nullae fuissent, nisi peccatum eis adi¬ tum patefecisset. Primum, tot sunt morborum genera, ut nec libris medicorum omnia comprehensa sint. Deinde, in eorum pluribus ac plane omni¬ bus etiam ipsa adjumenta et medicamenta, tormenta sunt, inedia, pharmaca, sectiones, ustiones, ut multi saepe levius malum aesti¬ ment morbum, quam medicinam. Tertio, inopia cibi ac potus ad quantam rabiem homines interdum adducant; multa et in sacris et in profanis auctoribus exem¬ pla declarant : « Nonne, inquit Augustinus lib. xxii. de Civ. Dei cap. 22, ad hoc per¬ duxit sitientes homines ardor immanis, ut urinam quoque humanam, vel etiam suam biberent? nonne ad hoc fames, ut a carnibus hominum abstinere se non possent, nec in¬ ventos homines mortuos, sed propter hoc a se occisos, nec quoslibet alienos, verum etiam filios matres incredibili crudelitate, quam rabida esuries faciebat, absumerent? » Quarto, ad inopiam arcendam tantus est labor necessarius, ut Scriptura primo homini dictum fuisse testatur : In sudore vultus tui vescetds pane tuo (2), Gen. m. Et rursum alio loco propter eamdem causam, ita dicitur homo nasci ad laborem, quasi ad proprium quod¬ dam munus, ut avis nascitur ad volatum, Job v (3). Itaque sicut miseria morbi per aliam miseriam sa;pe graviorem, id est, per medi¬ camenta pellitur : sic etiam malum inopise per malum laboris, nec brevius, nec levius temperatur. Non erat difficile Deo, qui pascit aves coeli, etiamsi non serant, neque metant, neque congregent in horrea, efficere, ut ho¬ mines etiam sine labore victum qua;rerent ; (1) Rom. VII, 24. - (2) Gen. III, 19. -(3) Job. V, 7. CAPUT XIII. 479 sed voluit in pcenam peccati, ut homines « a poenali exitio, » ut loquitur Augustinus loc. not. « non nisi poenali eruerentur auxilio. » Quinto accedit brevitas vitae. Nam cum homines ad scientiam rerum, quae propria est hominis operatio, non nisi longo tempore, magnoque labore perveniant, aequum esse videbatur, ut diutissime viverent, alioqui fulurum erat, ut pene nulli finem sibi pro¬ prium et naturalem attingerent. Contra ta¬ men vita hominis brevissima est. Plurimi enim ante decedunt, quam ad maturitatem venire coeperint, et qui longissime vivunt, ad aetatem cervorum, et cornicum minime perveniunt. Quare non defuerunt ex ethnicis, qui de natura quererentur, quod longiorem vitam cornicibus, quam hominibus dedisset. Alius tunc vitam relinquere se dicebat, cum disce¬ re, et vitam hominis propriam agere inci¬ peret. Alius librum suum ab illis verbis exor¬ ditur : « Ars longa, vita brevis, » quasi dicere vellet, non recte agi cum natura humana, quae propter vitae brevitatem artes sibi pro¬ prias assequi non potest. Scriptura etiam divina non tacet, vitam hominum esse bre¬ vissimam. » Homo natus de muliere (inquit Job cap. 14.) brevi vivens tempore , repletur multis miseriis, qui quasi flos egreditur et con¬ teritur, et fugit velut umbra (1). Isaias vero Propheta cap. 40. et Apostolus Petrus in epist. 1. cap. 1. hominem foeno eomparare non dubitarunt, quod ad primum solis ra¬ dium siccatur et cadit. Accedit postremo timor continuus immi¬ nentis mortis. Nam tametsi vita humana amara est valde, tamen adhuc amarior esse videtur interitus : Siccine separat, aiebat ille, amara mors (2). Et Apostolus ii. ad Cor. v. : Ingemiscimus, inquit, gravati , eo quod nolu¬ mus expoliari, sed supervestiri, ut absorbeatur quod mortale est a vita (3). Et ad Hebr. n. dicit, Christum per mortem suam destruxisse eum, qui habebat mortis imperium, id est, diabolum, ut liberaret eos, qui timore mor¬ tis, per totam vitam obnoxii erant servituti. Animus certe immortalis ; et qui naturalis forma corporis est, sine dubio corpus immor¬ tale desiderat. Proinde mors inimica natu¬ rae, et omnium terribilium extremum recte nominata est.