And still that which I conceived, was without form, not
as being deprived of all form, but in comparison of more beautiful
forms; and true reason did persuade me, that I must utterly uncase
it of all remnants of form whatsoever, if I would conceive matter
absolutely without form; and I could not; for sooner could I imagine
that not to be at all, which should be deprived of all form, than
conceive a thing betwixt form and nothing, neither formed, nor
nothing, a formless almost nothing. So my mind gave over to question
thereupon with my spirit, it being filled with the images of formed
bodies, and changing and varying them, as it willed; and I bent myself
to the bodies themselves, and looked more deeply into their
changeableness, by which they cease to be what they have been, and
begin to be what they were not; and this same shifting from form to
form, I suspected to be through a certain formless state, not
through a mere nothing; yet this I longed to know, not to suspect
only.-If then my voice and pen would confess unto Thee the whole,
whatsoever knots Thou didst open for me in this question, what
reader would hold out to take in the whole? Nor shall my heart for all
this cease to give Thee honour, and a song of praise, for those things
which it is not able to express.
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