This is one in a series from Jaques-Benigne Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries, and specifically the Fifth Day. There is more here on the Bossuet Project.
And God said, Give in to Adam, who has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Let us take care, then, that one may put his hand on the fruit of life, and not live forever. This divine derision was due to his presumption. God says in Himself and to the Divine Persons, and if you will, to the holy Angels: see this new God, who was not satisfied with the divine likeness that God had impressed in the depths of his soul, he made himself God in his own way; see how wise he is, and how well he has learned good and evil at his expense. Let us take care that after having stolen knowledge so well, he still does not rob us of immortality. Note that God adds derision to punishment. The torture is due to the revolt; but pride attracted derision. I called you, and you refused to hear my voice; I stretched my arm, and no one looked at me; you have despised all my counsels, you have neglected my opinions and reproaches; and I, too, will laugh in your loss; I will mock your misfortunes and your death. It is, you will say, to push vengeance to cruelty; I admit it, but God too will become cruel and pitiless. After his kindness has been despised, he will push the rigor to soak and wash his hands in the sinner’s blood. All the righteous will join into this mocking by God: And they will laugh at the ungodly, and they will cry out: Behold the man who did not put his help in God, but who hoped in the abundance of his riches; and he prevailed by his vanity. This senseless vanity offered him a flattering resemblance of Divinity itself. Adam has become like one of us; he wanted to be rich with his own goods; see that he has become powerful. Thus these dreadful and holy derisions of divine justice, followed by those of the righteous, have their origin in those where God insults Adam in his torment. Jesus Christ, who put us under cover of the righteousness of God, when he bore the burden, suffered this derision in his torment: If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him; May God, whom he boasts of having as his father, deliver him. Thus he insulted the impious in his torture, mingling with cruelty the bitterness of mockery; so he expiated the derision that had fallen on Adam and all men.
It is in the midst of this bitter and insulting derision that God chases him from the paradise of delights to work the land from which he was taken. And here, at the door of this delightful paradise, is a cherub who rolls in his hand a sword of fire; so that this same place, once so full of attractions, becomes an object of horror and terror.
Positive Infinity 