Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud
dejectedness, and a restless weariness.

Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to
account the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Thy
creation! had put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides
of my youth might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if
they could not be calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as
Thy law prescribes, O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of this
our death, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which
were excluded from Thy paradise? For Thy omnipotency is not far from
us, even when we be far from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to
have heeded the voice from the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have
trouble in the flesh, but I spare you. And it is good for a man not to
touch a woman. And, he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the
Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for
the things of this world, how he may please his wife.

To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being
severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Thy
embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following
the rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy
limits; yet I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For
Thou wert ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most
bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures
without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in
Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and
killest us, lest we die from Thee. Where was I, and how far was I
exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of the
age of my flesh, when the madness of lust (to which human