The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions

CHAPTER II.

Our decay and ruin caused by the Fall described. On the current smallness of our knowledge, with a critique of the Schoolmen medieval theologians and the Peripatetic Aristotelian philosophers who are overly confident in their opinions.

It is a miserable thing to have once been happy, and a misery we brought on ourselves is twice as bad. If humanity had never known happiness, our current state would not feel like misery. If we had not caused our own ruin, it would be easier to bear. God might have taken away our external joys, but only we could rob ourselves of innocence. That we are lower than the angels is not a misery, it is simply our nature. But that we have made ourselves like the animals that die is a great tragedy, because it is the result of our sin. While man knew no sin, he was ignorant of nothing that was important for a human to know. But when he sinned, that same act opened his eyes to see his own shame and closed them to almost everything else except his newly bought misery. Along with his naked body, he saw the nakedness of his soul. He saw the blindness and disorder of his faculties, which his innocence had never known. Whether our higher intellects or our unruly emotions were the primary cause of this anomie disorder or lawlessness, I will not argue. Sin is as hidden in its first cause as it is visible in its effects. It is the mercy of heaven that it is easier to know the cure than the origin of our sicknesses. It is certain that our higher mental powers share deeply in the resulting damage. And though Eve was the first to