| For I knew by the common teaching of Holy Church and by my own feeling, that the blame of our sin continually hangs upon us, from the first man to the time that we come up to heaven: then was this my marvel that I saw our Lord God showing to us no more blame than if we were as clean and as holy as Angels be in heaven. And between these two contraries my reason was greatly travailed through my blindness, and could have no rest for dread that His blessed presence should pass from my sight and I be left in unknowing [of] how He beholds us in our sin. For either [it] behoved me to see in God that sin was all done away, or else me behoved to see in God how He sees it, whereby I might truly know how it belongs to me to see sin, and the manner of our blame. My longing endured, Him continually beholding; and yet I could have no patience for great straits and perplexity, thinking: If I take it thus that we be no sinners and not blameworthy, it seems as I .should err and fail of knowing of this truth ; and if it be so that we be sinners and blameworthy, Good Lord, how may it then be that I cannot see this true thing in You, which art my God, my Maker, in whom I desire to see all truths? | |