Oddparts Press

they are less beautiful than the other higher parts are, transparent
all and shining. Wherefore then may I not conceive the formlessness of
matter (which Thou hadst created without beauty, whereof to make
this beautiful world) to be suitably intimated unto men, by the name
of earth invisible and without form.

So that when thought seeketh what the sense may conceive under this,
and saith to itself, "It is no intellectual form, as life, or justice;
because it is the matter of bodies; nor object of sense, because being
invisible, and without form, there was in it no object of sight or
sense";- while man's thought thus saith to itself, it may endeavour
either to know it, by being ignorant of it; or to be ignorant, by
knowing it.

But I, Lord, if I would, by my tongue and my pen, confess unto
Thee the whole, whatever Thyself hath taught me of that matter, -the
name whereof hearing before, and not understanding, when they who
understood it not, told me of it, so I conceived of it as having
innumerable forms and diverse, and therefore did not conceive it at
all, my mind tossed up and down foul and horrible "forms" out of all
order, but yet "forms" and I called it without form not that it wanted
all form, but because it had such as my mind would, if presented to
it, turn from, as unwonted and jarring, and human frailness would be
troubled at. And still that which I conceived, was without form, not
as being deprived of all form, but in comparison of more beautiful
forms; and true reason did persuade me, that I must utterly uncase
it of all remnants of form whatsoever, if I would conceive matter
absolutely without form; and I could not; for sooner could I imagine
that not to be at all, which should be deprived of all form, than
conceive a thing betwixt form and nothing, neither formed, nor
nothing, a formless almost nothing. So my mind gave over to question
thereupon with my spirit, it being filled with the images of formed
bodies, and changing and varying them, as it willed; and I bent myself
to the bodies themselves, and looked more deeply into their
changeableness, by which they cease to be what they have been, and