the crucified orator 744 Ah, flee, flee, O man! Flee, to your Savior, sinners. Imploring His almighty omnipotence against this untiring hunter of your soul, hand over and commend your soul with trust into His protection, guidance, and safekeeping. Call out to Him unceasingly: “Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.” Let my soul cleave to You. May Your right hand protect me. May my soul be rescued by Your power like a bird from the snares of fowlers. The conscience is connected to the soul. As long as the stain of vice does not taint it, it is cheerful, serene, and peaceful; it is a continual feast. However, as soon as [transgression] is committed, immediately a worm is born out of its decay and it incessantly gnaws, torments, and oppresses the sinner’s interior so that he seems to be carrying a living hell within him. It is a fable that poets devised about Tityus that a vulture relentlessly devours his liver but never finishes it, because it always grows back. Yet the vulture that tears the innards of sinners is both real and endures eternally. Does not Isaiah express this rather clearly in these words: “For their worm shall not die” (Is 66:24)? Let us, however, enter the Elysian Fields, so that we might understand this even better. Here both sin and the worm of conscience were born for the first time, for man, created by God in the state of perfect innocence, was made king of Paradise. When I mention the word “Paradise,” I refer to a place replete with all things which can be thought or which were desirable in a truly lawful manner. What more can I say? It was a place of “pleasure” — as the sacred historian testifies. If only it had never been lost! But how quickly it happened! Scarcely was Adam stricken with the pestilence of sin, when he was immediately expelled from the flowery garden of delight. “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden” (Gen 3:23). The soul of the father of us all possessed the most pleasant and attractive paradise as long as he was not conscious of any offense. Having committed the transrii, Romae 1532, ff.16v-17r.
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