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.
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