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Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo, 354-430

"The Confessions of St. Augustine"

I asked the sea
and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered,
"We are not thy God, seek above us." I asked the moving air; and the
whole air with his inhabitants answered, "Anaximenes was deceived, I
am not God. " I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, "Nor (say they)
are we the God whom thou seekest." And I replied unto all the things
which encompass the door of my flesh: "Ye have told me of my God, that
ye are not He; tell me something of Him." And they cried out with a
loud voice, "He made us. " My questioning them, was my thoughts on
them: and their form of beauty gave the answer. And I turned myself
unto myself, and said to myself, "Who art thou?" And I answered, "A
man." And behold, in me there present themselves to me soul, and body,
one without, the other within. By which of these ought I to seek my
God? I had sought Him in the body from earth to heaven, so far as I
could send messengers, the beams of mine eyes. But the better is the
inner, for to it as presiding and judging, all the bodily messengers
reported the answers of heaven and earth, and all things therein,
who said, "We are not God, but He made us.


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