[Meditationes seu Contemplationes devotissimae]

...did he flow out from the integrity of innate health. Truly, he had been placed in paradise under this condition, as Gregory testifies: that if he bound himself to the obedience of the Creator by the bond of charity, he would pass over to the celestial fatherland of the angels without the death of the flesh. But alas, because he broke the law decreed by the celestial majesty, he deserted the fortress of his station for the love of his Creator. By a mournful impulse of mutability, he was shaken from his innate solidity and fell from the glory and splendor of his dignity, such that while before the violation he lived in paradise—supported by fragrant flowers, crowned with glory and honor—after the division of mysteries, he began to flow away among the crowds of angels. The prophet recalls his fall sorrowfully, saying: "Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he is compared to foolish beasts and has become like them." O sad and tearful change! Man, the inhabitant of paradise, the lord of the earth, the citizen of heaven, the housemate of the Lord of Hosts, the brother of the supernal spirits, and the co-heir of celestial virtues, with a sudden conversion changes his glory into the likeness of a calf eating hay. O sad fall, which comes to us the more greatly the more we know that he was incautious! Indeed, the stain of this evil was increased and poured into the origin of all posterity. Truly, it was an evil, original sin, which we contracted from our first parent, in whom we all sinned, in whom we all die. For it did not kill only the first man himself, but the whole human race, because we received from him both condemnation and guilt. Therefore, David says he was conceived in iniquities, because iniquity is contracted in all from Adam and the bond of death, such that, as the apostle testifies, we are all born children of wrath, namely, children of vengeance, children of punishment, and children of hell. O sad legacy of the sons of Adam, by which we are generated in filth, fostered in darkness, and born in pains! With what concupiscence did you burn, O sad mother Eve, that you would spare neither yourself, nor your husband, nor your children who were to be born, adding them all together to terrible curses! Behold, you have begotten us children of sorrows, children of bitterness, and of indignation and eternal weeping. But you, Father Adam, who should have been a firmer observer of the law because of the wisdom and dignity with which your Creator had made you more splendid than your fate—what have you done to us? You have irritated the law of heaven, and behold, you have destined all of us to be heirs of the shadows of death. Who now, O faithful soul, in the meditation of these things...