What greater temptation can there be than a host of evil
examples? For this reason, indeed, the world is called one of the
enemies of God's saints, because with its allurements and ungodly
works it incites, provokes, and entices us from the way of God to
its own way. As we read in Genesis vi, "The sons of God saw the
daughters of men, that they were fair, and they were made flesh."
[Gen. 6:2,3] And in Numbers xxv, "The people of Israel began to
commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab." [Num. 25:1] So it is
good for us to be always oppressed with some trouble or other,
that we may not, in our weakness, stumble at the offences of the
world, and fall into sin. Thus Lot is praised by Peter, in II.
Peter ii., because he suffered many things because of the evil
example of the people of Sodom, so that he made progress thereby
in his righteousness. [2 Pet. 2:8] It must needs be that these
offences come, which furnish us an occasion for conflict and for
victory; but woe unto the world because of offences! [Matt. 18:7]
But if God procures us such great blessings in the sins of
others, should we not with our whole heart believe that He will
work, us much greater blessings in our own troubles; even though
our flesh and blood judge it to be otherwise!

Nor does the world confer a smaller blessing on us from another
side of its evils; namely, its adversities. For, when it is
unable to swallow us up with its allurements, and through its
offences to make us one with itself, it endeavors through
sufferings to drive us out, and through pains to cast us forth;
always laying snares for us by the example of its sins, or else
visiting its fury upon us through the torment of its pains. This
is indeed that fabled monster, Chimaera,[62] with the head of a
maiden, seductive, the body of a lion, cruel, and the tail of a
serpent, deadly. For the end of the world, both of its pleasures
and its tyranny, is poison and death everlasting. Hence, even as
God grants us to find our blessings in the sins of the world, so
also its persecutions, that they may not remain fruitless and in
vain, are appointed unto us to increase our blessings; so that
the very things that work us harm are turned to our profit. As
St. Augustine says, concerning the innocents slain by Herod,
"Never could he have done them so much good with his favor as he
did with his hatred." And St. Agatha,[63] the blessed martyr,
went to prison as to a banquet chamber; "for," said she, "