Oddparts Press

have given some specimens, or under that chief Predicament of
Substance.

What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me? when,
imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those often
Predicaments, I essayed in such wise to understand, O my God, Thy
wonderful and unchangeable Unity also, as if Thou also hadst been
subjected to Thine own greatness or beauty; so that (as in bodies)
they should exist in Thee, as their subject: whereas Thou Thyself
art Thy greatness and beauty; but a body is not great or fair in
that it is a body, seeing that, though it were less great or fair,
it should notwithstanding be a body. But it was falsehood which of
Thee I conceived, not truth, fictions of my misery, not the
realities of Thy blessedness. For Thou hadst commanded, and it was
done in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns to me,
and that in the sweat of my brows I should eat my bread.

And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the
so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read
by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not
whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back
to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face,
with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not
enlightened. Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic,
geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty
or any instructor, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God;
because both quickness of understanding, and acuteness in
discerning, is Thy gift: yet did I not thence sacrifice to Thee. So
then it served not to my use, but rather to my perdition, since I went
about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own keeping;
and I kept not my strength for Thee, but wandered from Thee into a far
country, to spend it upon harlotries. For what profited me good
abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt not that those arts
were attained with great difficulty, even by the studious and
talented, until I attempted to explain them to such; when he most