But Thou wert more inward to me than my most
inward part; and higher than my highest. I lighted upon that bold
woman, simple and knoweth nothing, shadowed out in Solomon, sitting at
the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies willingly, and drink
ye stolen waters which are sweet: she seduced me, because she found my
soul dwelling abroad in the eye of my flesh, and ruminating on such
food as through it I had devoured.
For other than this, that which really is I knew not; and was, as it
were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to foolish
deceivers, when they asked me, "whence is evil?" "is God bounded by
a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails?" "are they to be esteemed
righteous who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and
sacrifice living creatures?" At which I, in my ignorance, was much
troubled, and departing from the truth, seemed to myself to be
making towards it; because as yet I knew not that evil was nothing but
a privation of good, until at last a thing ceases altogether to be;
which how should I see, the sight of whose eyes reached only to
bodies, and of my mind to a phantasm? And I knew not God to be a
Spirit, not one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or
whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the
whole: and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is
defined by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not
wholly every where, as Spirit, as God.
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