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14. O my God! what miseries and mockeries did I then experience,
when obedience to my teachers was set before me as proper to my
boyhood, that I might flourish in this world, and distinguish myself
in the science of speech, which should get me honour amongst men, and
deceitful riches! After that I was put to school to get learning, of
which I (worthless as I was) knew not what use there was; and yet,
if slow to learn, I was flogged! For this was deemed praiseworthy by
our forefathers; and many before us, passing the same course, had
appointed beforehand for us these troublesome ways by which we were
compelled to pass, multiplying labour and sorrow upon the sons of
Adam. But we found, O Lord, men praying to Thee, and we learned
from them to conceive of Thee, according to our ability, to be some
Great One, who was able (though not visible to our senses) to hear
and help us. For as a boy I began to pray to Thee, my "help" and
my "refuge," and in invoking Thee broke the bands of my tongue, and
entreated Thee though little, with I no little earnestness, that I
might not be beaten at school. And when Thou heardedst me not,
giving me not over to folly thereby, my elders, yea, and my own
parents too, who wished me no ill, laughed at my stripes, my then
great and grievous ill.
15. Is there any one, Lord, with so high a spirit, cleaving to
Thee with so strong an affection for even a kind of obtuseness may do
that much but is there, I say, any one who, by cleaving devoutly
to Thee, is endowed with so great a courage that he can esteem lightly
those racks and hooks, and varied tortures of the same sort, against
which, throughout the whole world, men supplicate Thee with great
fear, deriding those who most bitterly fear them, just as our parents
derided the torments with which our masters punished-us when we were
boys? For we were no less afraid of our pains, nor did we pray less
to Thee to avoid them; and yet we sinned, in writing, or reading,
or reflecting upon our lessons less than was required of us. For we
wanted not, O Lord, memory or capacity, of which, by Thy will,
we possessed enough for our age, but we delighted only in play;
and we were punished for this by those who were doing the same things
themselves. But the idleness of our elders they call business, whilst
boys who do the like are punished by those same elders, and yet neither
boys nor men find any pity. For will any one of good sense approve of
my being whipped because, as a boy, I played ball, and so was
hindered from learning quickly those lessons by means of which, as a
man, I should play more unbecomingly? And did he by whom I was
beaten do other than this, who, when he was overcome in any little
controversy with a co-tutor, was more tormented by anger and envy than
I when beaten by a playfellow in a match at ball?
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