CHAPTER XX.
THE NINTH PRIVILEGE OF VIRTUE: THE MANNER IN WHICH GOD HEARS THE PRAYERS OF THE JUST.
TO comprehend what we are about to say upon this subject you must remember that there have been two universal deluges, one material, the other moral. The former took place in the time of Noe and destroyed every thing in the world but the ark and what it contained. The moral deluge, much greater and more fatal than the material, arose from the sin of our first parents. Unlike the flood in the days of Noe, it affected not only Adam and Eve, its guilty cause, but every human being. It affected the soul even more than the body. It robbed us of all the spiritual riches and supernatural treasures which were bestowed upon us in the person of our first parent.
From this first deluge came all the miseries and necessities under which we groan. So great and so numerous are these that a celebrated doctor, who was also an illustrious pontiff, has devoted to them an entire work.[1] Eminent philosophers, considering on the one hand man's superiority to all other creatures, and on the other the miseries and vices to which he is subject, have greatly wondered at such contradictions in so noble a creature. Unenlightened by revelation, they knew not the cause of this
- ↑ Innocent III,, "De Vilitate Conditionis Humanæ."
