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to the ultimate end of creation, and they all serve as useful instruments of the divine justice; and because they are all useful, and have been made by the author of all good, none of them can alter the ineffable repose of the creator of all things. Nothing is hateful to God but that which he has not made; and as he has created all that exists, nothing displeases him but the negation of what he has created. For this reason is it that disorder, which is the negation of the order which he established, and disobedience, which is the denial of the obedience due to him, are hateful in his sight. This disobedience, this disorder, are the supreme evil, inasmuch as they are the negation of the supreme good, the supreme evil consisting in this negation. But disobedience and disorder are nothing else than sin; from which it follows that sin, being an absolute negation on the part of man, of the supreme affirmation on the part of God, is therefore the supreme evil, which alone strikes God and his angels with horror.

Sin filled heaven with mourning, hell with lamentations, and the earth with calamities. It was sin which brought sickness, pestilence, famine, and death into the world. It was sin which caused the destruction of the most renowned and populous cities. It caused the downfall of Babylon and her splendid gardens, of Nineveh the proud, of Persepolis the daughter of the sun, of Memphis the seat of the most profound mysteries, of Sodom the impure, of Athens the witty, of Jerusalem the unfaithful, and of Rome the magnificent; for, if God ordained the destruction of all these cities, he only did so as a punishment and a remedy for sin. Sin has caused all the sighs that have agitated human breasts, and all the tears that have fallen, drop by drop, from