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to misfortune, leads us to death,
their eternal crown.
What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but
that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him
only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his
surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in
things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can
only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by
God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is
a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been
serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the
elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents,
fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has
lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own
destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of
nature.
Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are in fact
Izak van Langevelde
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