In those days there was a wise man who was proconsul, very learned and well known in medicine who put the Agonistic wreath with his hand on my dis-tempered head though not as a physician. For this disease only you can cure who resist the proud and give grace to the humble. You spoke to me, even by that old man, to heal my soul. For having become acquainted with him, I hung persistently and fixedly on his speech, for though spoken in simple terms, it was vivid, lively and earnest.

When he gathered from our conversations that was much given to the books of astrology with the kindliness of a father he advised me to throw them away and not to waste any care or attention on these vanities. He said that he had studied that art in his earlier years, intending to make it his profession. Since he understood Hippocrates, he could just as easily have understood such a subject as this. Yet he had abandoned it and taken up medicine for one reason only: he found astrology to be utterly false and as a serious man, he would not get his living by deluding people.

"But you", he said, You have rhetoric to support yourself by, so you follow this by free choice and not by necessity. That is all the more reason to believe me who laboured to acquire it so perfectly that I could make my living by it alone.

When I had demanded to know then how many true things could be foretold by it, he answered me as best he could that the force of chance spread through the whole order of things made this possible. For when a man by chance opened the pages of some poet who sang and thought of something wholly different, a verse often times fell out that was wondrously suited to the present circumstance. It is not to be wondered at if out of the soul of man by some higher but unconscious instinct within it, an answer should be given, not by art but by mere chance that corresponds to the business and actions of the questioner.

Either from or through him you conveyed to me and planted in my memory what I would later examine for myself. But at that time neither he nor my dear friend, Nebridius, a young man singularly good and morally pure who laughed at the whole subject of divination, could persuade me to forsake it. The authority of the authors still influenced me more greatly and as yet I had found no certain proof such as I sought by which it might be shown beyond all doubt that what had been accurately forecast by those consulted was the result of chance rather than the art of the star gazers.

In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had acquired a very dear friend of my own age from association in our studies. Like me, he was in the first opening flower of youth. We had grown up together as children and we had been both school fellows and play mates. But he was not yet my friend as he became later nor even then as true friendship is; for no friendship can be true unless you are the bond that holds it together, binding it to yourself by that love that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

Yet it was too sweet, ripened as it was by the warmth of similar studies; for I had turned him from the true faith which he had not soundly and thoroughly taken in as a youth towards those pernicious and superstitious fables which my mother mourned in me. He now went astray with me in these errors and my soul could not be without him. But you were close on the steps of your fugitives. At once God of vengeance and Fountain of mercies you turn us to yourself by wonderful means. You took that man from this life after scarcely a year of a friendship that had grown sweet to me above all the sweetness of my life.

Who can sing all your praise which one has felt in himself alone? What did you do then, my God, and how unsearchable are the depths of your judgments! For a long time my friend lay unconscious in a death sweat, very sick of a fever. Hope of his recovery being lost, he was baptised without his knowledge. Meanwhile, I paid little regard presuming that his soul would retain what it had received from me not what was wrought on his unconscious body. [by baptism]

But it proved otherwise for he was revived and restored. Then, as soon as I could speak with him (and I could as soon as he was able, for I never left him and we hung all too much on each other) I tried to joke with him thinking that he would jest with me about the baptism which he had received when totally without consciousness or feeling. But he drew back from me as from an enemy. In a remarkable and unexpected freedom, he told me that if I wanted to continue to be his friend, to refrain from speaking to him in such a way. I, all confounded and amazed, concealed all my emotions till he should get well and his health strong enough for me to deal with him as I wished.

But he was removed from my madness that he might be saved by you for my comfort. A few days later during my absence he had a return of the fever and died.

My heart was utterly darkened................

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -