1For your judgments are great and hard to recount; therefore uninstructed souls went astray.
2For when lawless men supposed they could oppress a holy nation, they lay as prisoners of darkness and captives of a long night, shut up under their roofs, fugitives from eternal providence.
3For thinking to be hidden in their secret sins, they were scattered under a dark veil of oblivion, dreadfully amazed and terrified by phantoms.
4For not even the recess that held them kept them free from fear, but terrifying sounds boomed around them, and gloomy phantoms with joyless faces appeared.
5No force of fire had power to give light, nor did the bright flames of the stars dare to illuminate that gloomy night.
6Only a spontaneous fire, full of terror, shone on them. And being terrified by that sight which could not be seen, they considered the things they did see to be worse.
7The mockeries of their magic art lay overthrown, and their boasted wisdom suffered a shameful refutation.
8For those who promised to drive away terrors and disturbances from a troubled soul were themselves sick with a fear deserving of laughter.
9For even if nothing else alarming frightened them, they were startled by the passing of beasts and the hissing of serpents,
10perishing in terror and refusing to look upon the air, from which there is no escape.
11For wickedness, condemned by its own witness, is a cowardly thing; pressed by conscience, it always anticipates the worst.
12For fear is nothing but the betrayal of the aids that come from reason.
13And when expectation from within is weaker, it magnifies the ignorance of the cause that brings the torment.
14But they, sleeping the same sleep during that truly inescapable night that had come from the recesses of powerless Hades,
15were at times driven by monstrous phantoms, and at other times paralyzed by their soul’s betrayal—for a sudden and unexpected fear had overwhelmed them.
16And so, whoever fell down was kept guarded, shut up in a prison without iron bars.
17For whether one was a farmer, or a shepherd, or a laborer toiling in the wilderness, he was seized and endured the inescapable necessity.
18For all were bound with one chain of darkness. Whether it was a whistling wind, or the melodious sound of birds among leafy branches, or the rhythm of water flowing violently,
19or the harsh crash of falling rocks, or the unseen running of leaping animals, or the roar of the fiercest wild beasts, or an echo rebounding from the hollows of the mountains—it paralyzed them with terror.
20For the whole world was illuminated with brilliant light and was occupied with unhindered tasks.
21But over them alone a heavy night was spread, an image of the darkness that was to receive them. Yet they were a greater burden to themselves than the darkness.
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