What makes me evil
and miserable is, that the thing spoiled in me is the image of the
Perfect. Nothing can be evil but in virtue of a good hypostasis. No,
no! nothing can make it that I am not the child of God. If one say,
"Look at the animals: God made them: you do not call them the children
of God!" I answer: "But I am to blame; they are not to blame! I cling
fast to my blame: it is the seal of my childhood." I have nothing to
argue from in the animals, for I do not understand them. Two things
only I am sure of: that God is to them "a faithful creator;" and that
the sooner I put in force my claim to be a child of God, the better for
them; for they too are fallen, though without blame.'
'But you are evil: how can you be a child of the Good?'
'Just as many an evil son is the child of a good parent.'
'But in him you call a good parent, there yet lay evil, and that
accounts for the child being evil.'
'I cannot explain. God let me be born through evil channels. But in
whatever manner I may have become an unworthy child, I cannot thereby
have ceased to be a child of God--his child in the way that a child
must ever be the child of the man of whom he comes.
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