31. And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed
that thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a bright and vast body and
that I was a particle of that body? O perversity gone too far!
But so it was with me. And I do not blush, O my God, to confess
thy mercies to me in thy presence, or to call upon thee -- any
more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies
before men, and bayed, houndlike, against thee. What good was it
for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and
disentangle all those knotty volumes, without help from a human
teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with
such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was
concerned? And what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to
have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from
thee, and since they remained in the nest of thy Church to become
safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a
sound faith.
O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope --
defend us and support us.[119] Thou wilt bear us up when we are
little and even down to our gray hairs thou wilt carry us.
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