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| Preface.
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Preface.—The
Knowledge of God is to Be Sought from God.
1.
Theknowledge of things terrestrial and
celestial is commonly thought much of by men. Yet those doubtless
judge better who prefer to that knowledge, the knowledge of
themselves; and that mind is more praiseworthy which knows even its
own weakness, than that which, without regard to this, searches
out, and even comes to know, the ways of the stars, or which holds
fast such knowledge already acquired, while ignorant of the way by
which itself to enter into its own proper health and strength. But
if any one has already become awake towards God, kindled by the
warmth of the Holy Spirit, and in the love of God has become vile
in his own eyes; and through wishing, yet not having strength to
come in unto Him, and through the light He gives, has given heed to
himself, and has found himself, and has learned that his own
filthiness cannot mingle with His purity; and feels it sweet to
weep and to entreat Him, that again and again He will have
compassion, until he have put off all his wretchedness; and to pray
confidently, as having already received of free gift the pledge of
salvation through his only Saviour and Enlightener of man:—such
an one, so acting, and so lamenting, knowledge does not puff up,
because charity edifieth;438
for he has preferred knowledge to
knowledge, he has preferred to know his own weakness, rather than
to know the walls of the world, the foundations of the earth, and
the pinnacles of heaven. And by obtaining this knowledge, he has
obtained also sorrow;439
but sorrow for straying away from
the desire of reaching his own proper country, and the Creator of
it, his own blessed God. And if among men such as these, in the
family of Thy Christ, O Lord my God, I groan among Thy poor, give
me out of Thy bread to answer men who do not hunger and thirst
after righteousness, but are sated and abound.440
But it is the vain image of those
things that has sated them, not Thy truth, which they have repelled
and shrunk from, and so fall into their own vanity. I certainly
know how many figments the human heart gives birth to. And what is
my own heart but a human heart? But I
pray the God of my heart,
that I may not vomit forth (eructuem) into these writings
any of these figments for solid truths, but that there may pass
into them only what the breath of His truth has breathed into me;
cast out though I am from the sight of His eyes,441
and striving from afar to return by
the way which the divinity of His only-begotten Son has made by His
humanity. And this truth, changeable though I am, I so far drink
in, as far as in it I see nothing changeable: neither in place and
time, as is the case with bodies; nor in time alone, and in a
certain sense place, as with the thoughts of our own spirits; nor
in time alone, and not even in any semblance of place, as with some
of the reasonings of our own minds. For the essence of God, whereby
He is, has altogether nothing changeable, neither in eternity, nor
in truth, nor in will; since there truth is eternal, love eternal;
and there love is true, eternity true; and there eternity is loved,
and truth is loved.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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