of which it is said,

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and
her Seed, and It shall bruise your head (Ge 3:15).

The serpent is evil of every sort; its head is self-love. The seed of the
woman is the Lord, and the enmity set is between the love of man's
proprium and the Lord, thus between man's own prudence and the Lord's
divine providence. For man's own prudence is constantly exalting that
head, and divine providence is constantly abasing it.

[2] If man felt this, he would be enraged and wrought-up against God and
would perish. While he does not feel it, he may be enraged and wrought-up
against others or himself or against fortune without perishing. Therefore
the Lord leads man by His divine providence in freedom always, and the
freedom seems to man to be utterly his own. To lead a man freely in
opposition to himself is like raising a heavy and resisting weight from
the ground by means of screws through the power of which weight and
resistance are not felt. And it is as though someone is unknowingly with
an enemy who means to kill him and a friend leads him away quietly and
only afterwards tells him the enemy's intention.

212. Who does not talk of fortune? Who does not acknowledge it by
speaking of it and know something of it by experience? Yet who knows what
it is? One cannot deny that it is something, for it exists and occurs,
and a thing cannot exist and occur without being caused; but the cause of
this something, fortune, is not known. Lest fortune be denied merely
because the cause is unknown, consider dice or playing cards and play
yourself or ask the players; do any deny that fortune exists? For they
play with it and it plays with them surprisingly. Who can repulse it if
it opposes him? Does it not laugh then at prudence and wisdom? When you
shake the dice or shuffle the cards, does fortune not seem to know and
direct the turns and twists of the wrists in favor of one player rather
than another for some cause? Can the cause have any other source than
divine providence in outermost things where it works along with human
prudence in a wonderful way, constant or changeful, concealing itself at
the same time?

[2] We know that pagans of old acknowledged Fortune and built a temple to
her, as Italians did at Rome. It has been granted me to learn many things
which I am not permitted to make public about this fortune, which, as was
said, is divine providence in outmosts. These made