26. SICKNESS AND EARLY DEATH
[1] Says a Greek Jew: “Lord and Master, this is now quite clear to us, but there is still something for which I have no true explanation. Why do so many children have to die at the most tender age while still undeveloped, and why must physical death almost always be preceded by a bad illness which weakens and kills the body? Once a man is mature, he could as a soul leave
the body easily and painlessly, and children should never die before reaching a certain maturity. However, what happens all the time is this: Children die at any age, and the bad diseases are always there and are a continual plague for men. O Lord and Master, why must that be so on this earth?”
[2] I said: “This need not be so at all and was not the case in the deep past, for do you ever read in a chronicle of bad illnesses amongst the men who were devoted to God and living according to His commandments!? They all lived to a ripe old age and their passing was a gentle, painless going to sleep. Also, no child ever died, for it was begotten by very healthy parents and nourished and raised according to sound and simple natural principles.
[3] Only later, when arrogance and with it a whole legion of the grossest sins against God's commandments and laws of nature gained entrance among people, did all sorts of bad ailments occur among them through their own fault. The thus weakened people could then no longer beget healthy children. Such children, already crippled from the womb, gradually became prone to more and more attacks from all kinds of diseases and began to die at all ages.
[4] Because this is now happening you must not think that God had ordained this for men for some inexplicable, secret reason. He allowed it, firstly, so that the people be prevented from too much sinning through their ailments and, secondly, that they through their painful suffering distance themselves from the world, go into themselves, recognize their sins, detest them and in patient submission to God's will attain eternal bliss.