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1. DEAD now was that evil and abominable youth of mine, and I
was passing into early manhood: as I increased in years, the fouler
became I in vanity, who could not conceive of any substance but such
as I saw with my own eyes. I thought not of Thee, O God, under
the form of a human body. Since the time I began to hear something of
wisdom, I always avoided this; and I rejoiced to have found the same
in the faith of our spiritual mother, Thy Catholic Church. But
what else to imagine Thee I knew not. And I, a man, and such a
man, sought to conceive of Thee, the sovereign and only true God;
and I did in my inmost heart believe that Thou wert incorruptible,
and inviolable, and unchangeable; because, not knowing whence or
how, yet most plainly did I see and feel sure that that which may be
corrupted must be worse than that which cannot, and what cannot be
violated did I without hesitation prefer before that which can, and
deemed that which suffers no change to be better than that which is
changeable. Violently did my heart cry out against all my phantasms,
and with this one blow I endeavoured to beat away from the eye of my
mind all that unclean crowd which fluttered around it. And lo, being
scarce put off, they, in the twinkling of an eye, pressed in
multitudes around me, dashed against my face, and beclouded it; so
that, though I thought not of Thee under the form of a human body,
yet was I constrained to image Thee to be something corporeal in
space, either infused into the world, or infinitely diffused beyond
it, even that incorruptible, inviolable, and unchangeable,
which I preferred to the corruptible, and violable, and changeable;
since whatsoever I conceived, deprived of this space, appeared as
nothing to me, yea, altogether nothing, not even a void, as if a
body were removed from its place and the place should remain empty of
any body at all, whether earthy, terrestrial, watery, aerial, or
celestial, but should remain a void place a spacious nothing, as
it were.
2. I therefore being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself,
whatsoever was not stretched over certain spaces, nor diffused, nor
crowded together, nor swelled out, or which did not or could not
receive some of these dimensions, I judged to be altogether nothing.
For over such forms as my eyes are wont to range did my heart then
range; nor did I see that this same observation, by which I formed
those same images, was not of this kind, and yet it could not have
formed them had not itself been something great. In like manner did I
conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast through infinite spaces,
on every side penetrating the whole mass of the world, and beyond it,
all ways, through immeasurable and boundless spaces; so that the earth
should have Thee, the heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, and
they bounded in Thee, but Thou nowhere. For as the body of this air
which is above the earth preventeth not the light of the sun from
passing through it, penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting,
but by filling it entirely, so I imagined the body, not of heaven,
air, and sea only, but of the earth also, to be pervious to Thee,
and in all its greatest parts as well as smallest penetrable to receive
Thy presence, by a secret inspiration, both inwardly and outwardly
governing all things which Thou hast created. So I conjectured,
because I was unable to think of anything else; for it was untrue.
For in this way would a greater part of the earth contain a greater
portion of Thee, and the less a lesser; and all things should so be
full of Thee, as that the body of an elephant should contain more of
Thee than that of a sparrow by how much larger it is, and occupies
more room; and so shouldest Thou make the portions of Thyself present
unto the several portions of the world, in pieces, great to the
great, little to the little. But Thou art not such a one; nor hadst
Thou as yet enlightened my darkness.
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