Page:Catechismoftrent.djvu/364

 poses of life is to be referred to the glory of God: " Whether you eat or drink, or whatever else you do, do all to the glory of God."

Importance In order that the faithful may see the importance of this petition, the pastor will advert to the necessity of external things, in order to support life; and this they will the more easily comprehend, by comparing the wants of our protoparent with those of his posterity. True it is, that, although in a state of spotless innocence, from which he himself, and, through his transgression, all Ins posterity fell, he had occasion to use food for the refection of the body; yet, between his wants, and those to which we are subject, there exists a wide diversity. He stood not in need of clothes to cover him, of a house to shelter him, of weapons to defend him, of medicine to restore health, nor of many other things which are necessary to us for the protection and preservation of our weak and frail bodies: to enjoy immortality, it had been sufficient for him to eat of the fruit which the tree of life spontaneously yielded; whilst he and all his posterity should have been exempt from the labour of cultivating the earth in the sweat of their brow. Placed in that habitation of pleasure in order to be occupied, he was not, in the midst of these delights, to lead a life of listless indolence; but to him no employment could be troublesome, no duty unpleasant. Occupied in the cultivation of those beautiful gardens, his care would have been always blessed with a profusion of fruits the most delicious, his labours never disappointed, his hopes never blasted.

His posterity, on the contrary, are not only deprived of the fruit of the tree of life, but also condemned to this dreadful sentence, " Cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shall thou eat thereof all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shall eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return." Our condition, therefore, is entirely different from what his and that of his posterity would have been, had he continued faithful to God. All things have been thrown into disorder, and have undergone a melancholy deterioration; and of the evils consequent to primeval transgression, it is not the least, that the heaviest cost, and labour, and toil, are frequently expended in vain; either because the crops are unproductive, or because the fruits of the earth are destroyed by noxious weeds, by heavy rains, by storms, hail, blight, or blast. Thus is the entire labour of the year quickly reduced to nothing, by the inclemency of the weather, or the sterilily of the soil; a calamity with which we are visited in punishment of our crimes, which provoke the wrath of God, and prevent him from blessing our labours; whilst, at the same