Found this reading “O Lost” last night. Swift says it so well.
a sinner, suppliant, before God, bearded with this legend: “If you do not confess to Me what I already know, I shall condemn you in the First Place, Since I am Absolute Love, to my Avenging Wrath; in the Second Place, SInce I am Life and inhabit the Universe and am in all of You, to my Enemy who, Being Evil, has no existence but is nevertheless against Me and inhabits part of you; in the Third Place, to the Evil of My Creation which, since I am the cause and fulfilment of Absolute Good, could never have existed in the First Place.”
Good stuff. He is just warming up though,
Since it was predestined before your birth that of your own Free Will you should commit a non-existent sin of which you are incapable, I shall mete out to you the punishment that I planned for you before you had voluntarily succumbed to the undemonstratable Evil which, in my all-seeing ignorance, I forced you to succumb to without letting Myself be conscious of it.
Ah Tom, well said, well said. It never made much sense to me either.
Posted by james at March 30, 2004 07:29 PM | TrackBack