I should not have paid any attention to his words: I know that he is a thief and a murderer. But some incomprehensible weakness, weakness of will, defeats me! I heed the words of sin, I look at the forbidden fruit. In vain my conscience reminds me that eating this fruit is also tasting death.

If there is no forbidden fruit before my eyes, this fruit is suddenly pictured in my imagination, pictured, as if by the hand of enchantment.

The feelings of the heart are drawn to a seductive picture, like a harlot. Her appearance is captivating, temptation breathes from her; it is adorned with precious, shining utensils; its deadly effects are carefully concealed. He seeks the sin of sacrifice from the heart, when the body cannot offer this sacrifice, in the absence of the object itself.

Sin acts in me with sinful thoughts, acts with sinful sensations, with the sensation of the heart, and with the sensation of the body; acts through the bodily senses, acts through the imagination.

To what conclusion does such a view of myself lead me? To the conclusion that in me, in my whole being, there lives a sinful injury, which sympathizes with and helps the sin that attacks me from without. I am like a prisoner bound with heavy chains: whoever is allowed to do so seizes the prisoner, draws him whither he will, because the prisoner, being bound in chains, has no opportunity to offer resistance.

Sin once penetrated into the lofty paradise. There he offered to my forefathers the partaking of the forbidden fruit. There he deceived them, there he smote the deceived with eternal death. And to me, their descendant, he constantly repeats the same sentence; and I, their descendant, is constantly trying to deceive and destroy.

Adam and Eve were immediately expelled from paradise after their sin and cast out into the land of sorrows [266]; I was born in this land of weeping and affliction! But this does not justify me: paradise has been brought to me here by the Redeemer, planted in my heart. I have driven paradise out of my heart by sin. Now there is a mixture of good and evil, there is a fierce struggle between good and evil, there is a clash of innumerable passions, there is torment, a foretaste of eternal hellish torment.

I see in myself the proof that I am the son of Adam: I retain his inclination to evil; I agree with the proposals of the seducer, although I know for certain [without a doubt – Ed.] that a deception is being offered to me, a murder is being prepared.

It would be in vain for me to accuse my forefathers for the sin they have communicated to me: I have been freed from the captivity of sin by the Redeemer, and I no longer fall into sin from violence, but arbitrarily.

The forefathers once committed a transgression of one of God's commandments in paradise, and I, being in the bosom of the Church of Christ, unceasingly violate all the Divine commandments of Christ, my God and Savior.

Then my soul is troubled with anger and bitterness! In my imagination the dagger flashes over the head of the enemy, and my heart revels in the satisfied vengeance wrought by the dream. I imagine scattered heaps of gold! after them are depicted magnificent chambers, gardens, all the objects of luxury, voluptuousness, pride, which are provided by gold and for which the sin-loving man worships this idol — the means of fulfilling all perishable desires. Then I am seduced by honors and power! I am carried away, I am occupied with dreams of governing people and countries, of providing them with perishable acquisitions, and myself with perishable glory. Then, as if with my own eyes, tables with steaming and fragrant viands stand before me! ridiculously and at the same time pitifully I delight in the seductions that present themselves before me. Then suddenly I see myself righteous, or, rather, my heart is hypocritical, strives to appropriate righteousness to itself, flatters itself, cares about human praise, how to attract it to itself!

{p. 115}

Passions dispute me one from another, constantly transmit one to another, disturb and disturb me. And I don't see my sorrowful state! on my mind is an impenetrable veil of darkness; A heavy stone of insensibility lies on the heart.

Will my mind come to its senses, will it want to go to good? my heart, accustomed to sinful pleasures, opposes him, my body, which has acquired bestial desires, opposes him. Even in me I have lost the concept that my body, as created for eternity, is capable of Divine desires and movements, that bestial strivings are its ailment, brought into it by the fall.