With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted
with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor -i.e., their
"subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of
strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding
thereon their malicious birth. Nothing can be liker the very actions
of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called than
"Subverters"? themselves subverted and altogether perverted first, the
deceiving spirits secretly deriding and seducing them, wherein
themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others.
Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I
books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable
and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of
study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all
admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation
to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my
affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself O Lord; and made me
have other purposes and desires.
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