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3. Nor did I now groan in my prayers that Thou wouldest help me;
but my mind was wholly intent on knowledge, and eager to dispute. And
Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world' counted
happiness, in that such great personages held him in honour; only his
celibacy appeared to me a painful thing. But what hope he cherished,
what struggles he had against the temptations that beset his very
excellences, what solace in adversities, and what savoury joys Thy
bread possessed for the hidden mouth of his heart when ruminating on
it, I could neither conjecture, nor had I experienced. Nor did he
know my embarrassments, nor the pit of my danger. For I could not
request of him what I wished as I wished, in that I was debarred
from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy people, whose
infirmities he devoted himself to. With whom when he was not engaged
(which was but a little time), he either was refreshing his body with
necessary sustenance, or his mind with reading. But while reading,
his eyes glanced over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense,
but his voice and tongue were silent. Ofttimes, when we had come
(for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the
arrival of those who came should be announced to him), we saw him thus
reading to himself, and never otherwise; and, having long sat in
silence (for who durst interrupt one so intent?), we were fain to
depart, inferring that in the little time he secured for the recruiting
of his mind, free from the clamour of other men's business, he was
unwilling to be taken off. And perchance he was fearful lest, if the
author he studied should express aught vaguely, some doubtful and
attentive hearer should ask him to expound it, or to discuss some of
the more abstruse questions, as that, his time. being thus occupied,
he could not turn over as many volumes as he wished; at-though the
preservation of his voice, which was very easily weakened, might be
the truer reason for his reading to himself. But whatever was his
motive in so doing, doubtless in such a man was a good one.
4. But verily no opportunity could I find of ascertaining what I
desired from that Thy so holy oracle, his breast, unless the thing
might be entered into briefly. But those surgings in me required to
find him at full leisure, that I might pour them out to him, but
never were they able to find him so; and I heard him, indeed, every
Lord's day, "rightly dividing the word of truth" among the people;
and I was all the more convinced that all those knots of crafty
calumnies, which those deceivers of ours had knit against the divine
books, could be unravelled. But so soon as I understood, withal,
that man made "after the image of Him that created him" was not so
understood by Thy spiritual sons (whom of the Catholic mother Thou
hadst begotten again through grace), as though they believed and
imagined Thee to be bounded by human form, although what was the
nature of a spiritual substance I had not the faintest or dimmest
suspicion, yet rejoicing, I blushed that for so many years I had
barked, not against the Catholic faith, but against the fables of
carnal imaginations. For I had been both impious and rash in this,
that what I ought inquiring to have learnt, I had pronounced on
condemning. For Thou, O most high and most near, most secret, yet
most present, who hast not limbs some larger some smaller, but art
wholly everywhere, and nowhere in space, nor art Thou of such
corporeal form, yet hast Thou created man after Thine own image,
and, behold, from head to foot is he confined by space.
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