Oddparts Press

re-collected from my old conversation, to follow The One, forgetting
what is behind, and not distended but extended, not to things which
shall be and shall pass away, but to those things which are before,
not distractedly but intently, I follow on for the prize of my
heavenly calling, where I may hear the voice of Thy praise, and
contemplate Thy delights, neither to come, nor to pass away. But now
are my years spent in mourning. And Thou, O Lord, art my comfort, my
Father everlasting, but I have been severed amid times, whose order
I know not; and my thoughts, even the inmost bowels of my soul, are
rent and mangled with tumultuous varieties, until I flow together into
Thee, purified and molten by the fire of Thy love.

And now will I stand, and become firm in Thee, in my mould, Thy
truth; nor will I endure the questions of men, who by a penal
disease thirst for more than they can contain, and say, "what did
God before He made heaven and earth?" Or, "How came it into His mind
to make any thing, having never before made any thing?" Give them, O
Lord, well to bethink themselves what they say, and to find, that
"never" cannot be predicated, when "time" is not. This then that He is
said "never to have made"; what else is it to say, than "in 'no have
made?" Let them see therefore, that time cannot be without created
being, and cease to speak that vanity. May they also be extended
towards those things which are before; and understand Thee before
all times, the eternal Creator of all times, and that no times be
coeternal with Thee, nor any creature, even if there be any creature
before all times.

O Lord my God, what a depth is that recess of Thy mysteries, and how
far from it have the consequences of my transgressions cast me! Heal
mine eyes, that I may share the joy of Thy light. Certainly, if
there be mind gifted with such vast knowledge and foreknowledge, as to
know all things past and to come, as I know one well-known Psalm,
truly that mind is passing wonderful, and fearfully amazing; in that
nothing past, nothing to come in after-ages, is any more hidden from
him, than when I sung that Psalm, was hidden from me what, and how