Miscellanies 3.16.100

“Cursed be the day on which I was born, and let it not be desired,” says Jeremiah, not calling birth simply cursed, but despairing at the sins and disobedience of the people. He adds, at any rate: “For why was I born to see toils and troubles, and my days were spent in shame?” Indeed all who preached the truth were persecuted and in danger because of the disobedience of their hearers. “For why did my mother's womb not become my tomb, so that I might not see the toil of Jacob and the labor of the race of Israel?” says Ezra the prophet. “No one is clean from filth,” says Job, “not even if his life is one day.” Let them tell us where the newborn child committed sexual immorality, or how the one who has done nothing has fallen under the curse of Adam. It remains for them, it seems, to say consistently that birth is evil, not only that of the body, but also that of the soul, for the sake of which the body exists. And when David says, “In sins I was conceived, and in lawless deeds my mother bore me,” he speaks prophetically of Eve as mother; but Eve became “the mother of the living”; and if he was conceived in sin, yet he himself was not in sin, nor was he himself sin.