For God not only made us out of nothing, but through the grace of the Word He also granted us life according to God. But human beings turned away from eternal things and, following the devil’s counsel, turned toward corruptible things. They therefore became the cause of their own corruption in death. As I said before, they were corruptible by nature, yet through the grace of their participation in the Word they could have escaped what belonged to their nature, if they had remained good.
That is to say, the presence of the Word with them kept even their natural corruption from approaching them, as also Wisdom says: "God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world." When this happened, men began to die, and corruption flourished against them and exercised over them a power greater than what was natural, because God’s warning against transgressing the commandment stood against them.
Even in their offenses, human beings did not stop within any fixed limits. Advancing little by little, they finally went beyond all measure. At first they became inventors of wickedness and brought death and corruption upon themselves. Later they turned aside into injustice, surpassed every form of lawlessness, and did not stop at any one evil, but continually devised new evils upon new evils, becoming insatiable in sin.
Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, the whole earth was filled with murders and plunder, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness.
Even crimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: "Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in themselves the due return for their error."