“The will of God has been kept in obscurity in many ways.  In the first place, there is evil instruction, wicked association, terrible society, unseemly discourses, wrongful prejudice.  Thereby is error, then fearlessness, unbelief, fornication, covetousness, vainglory; and ten thousand other such evils, filling the world as a quantity of smoke fills a house, have obscured the sight of the men inhabiting the world, and have not suffered them to look up and become acquainted with God the Creator from the delineation of Himself which He has given, and to know what is pleasing to Him.  Wherefore it behoves the lovers of truth, crying out inwardly from their breasts, to call for aid, with truth-loving reason, that some one living within the house⁹¹³

913 A conjectural reading, “being without the house,” seems preferable.

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