O Lord, Who Love the Living

In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, you sent upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them. For they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins. Not only could their damage exterminate men, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright. Even apart from these, men could fall at a single breath when pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of your power. But you have arranged all things by measure and number and weight. How would anything have endured if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare