scratch the surface; upon which, as on envenomed nails, followed
inflamed swelling, impostumes, and a putrefied sore. My life being
such, was it life, O my God?

And Thy faithful mercy hovered over me afar. Upon how grievous
iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity,
that having forsaken Thee, it might bring me to the treacherous abyss,
and the beguiling service of devils, to whom I sacrificed my evil
actions, and in all these things Thou didst scourge me! I dared
even, while Thy solemnities were celebrated within the walls of Thy
Church, to desire, and to compass a business deserving death for its
fruits, for which Thou scourgedst me with grievous punishments, though
nothing to my fault, O Thou my exceeding mercy, my God, my refuge from
those terrible destroyers, among whom I wandered with a stiff neck,
withdrawing further from Thee, loving mine own ways, and not Thine;
loving a vagrant liberty.

Those studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view
to excelling in the courts of litigation; the more bepraised, the
craftier. Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness.
And now I was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly,
and I swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far
quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those
"Subverters" (for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge
of gallantry) among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was
not even as they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted
with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor -i.e., their
"subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of
strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding
thereon their malicious birth. Nothing can be liker the very actions