Oddparts Press

Deceased was now that my evil and abominable youth, and I was
passing into early manhood; the more defiled by vain things as I
grew in years, who could not imagine any substance, but such as is
wont to be seen with these eyes. I thought not of Thee, O God, under
the figure of a human body; since I began to hear aught of wisdom, I
always avoided this; and rejoiced to have found the same in the
faith of our spiritual mother, Thy Catholic Church. But what else to
conceive of Thee I knew not. And I, a man, and such a man, sought to
conceive of Thee the sovereign, only, true God; and I did in my inmost
soul believe that Thou wert incorruptible, and uninjurable, and
unchangeable; because though not knowing whence or how, yet I saw
plainly, and was sure, that that which may be corrupted must be
inferior to that which cannot; what could not be injured I preferred
unhesitatingly to what could receive injury; the unchangeable to
things subject to change. My heart passionately cried out against
all my phantoms, and with this one blow I sought to beat away from the
eye of my mind all that unclean troop which buzzed around it. And
to, being scarce put off, in the twinkling of an eye they gathered
again thick about me, flew against my face, and beclouded it; so
that though not under the form of the human body, yet was I
constrained to conceive of Thee (that incorruptible, uninjurable,
and unchangeable, which I preferred before the corruptible, and
injurable, and changeable) as being in space, whether infused into the
world, or diffused infinitely without it. Because whatsoever I
conceived, deprived of this space, seemed to me nothing, yea
altogether nothing, not even a void, as if a body were taken out of
its place, and the place should remain empty of any body at all, of
earth and water, air and heaven, yet would it remain a void place,
as it were a spacious nothing.

I then being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself,
whatsoever was not extended over certain spaces, nor diffused, nor
condensed, nor swelled out, or did not or could not receive some of