Tractatus Prior, Pars Prior, Cap. 2. Oratio de creatione primi hominis et eius miserabiU lapsu.

Tractatus Prior, Pars Prior, Cap. 2. Oratio de creatione primi hominis et eius miserabiU lapsu.

I bless you and give thanks to you, holy Trinity and inseparable Unity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one true God almighty, who created heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, in the beginning to declare the ineffable abundance of your goodness, and who exalted man to a special honor above all other creatures, making him in your image and likeness, and giving him dominion, reason, and an innocent life. I praise and glorify you for that great gift by which you adorned humanity in paradise with abundant delights, so that he might have the highest things to enjoy, the lower things to govern, and possess everything together in order to praise you forever. I praise and glorify you, most merciful God, for your excellent mercy and unfathomable compassion, by which you spared humanity, who has sinned and is ungrateful for all your blessings, from the irreparable fall, allowing him to seek repentance outside the delights of paradise. Although he deserved eternal damnation for his transgression and should not have been able to obtain any forgiveness, you have not used this severity of justice, but instead imposed upon him the burden of worthy repentance through the ineffable sweetness of your mercy, and after a long time, you have provided the oil of longed-for indulgence. And so it happened that your rational creature was saved by grace, which fell into guilt through its own wrongdoing. Therefore, every faithful soul should give thanks to you and not trust in its own strength or boast in the righteousness of its own merits. For, O my God, we are your creation: we exist through your goodness; we have received what we have through your generosity. But because of our wickedness, we quickly fall and fail; and unless we are raised up and strengthened again by the protection of your mercy, we tend always toward worse things and waste away in evil. Therefore, most merciful God, we implore your mercy; we call to mind the abundance of your sweetness, we sweetly proclaim it, and we excellently declare it. To you, we offer the sacrifice of pious praise for the multitude of your abundant mercy, with thanksgiving, which you have fully demonstrated to us, your sinful children, sold under sin.