The Origin of Medicine

the end and aim of my efforts tends toward this: that Your incomprehensible Name may be sanctified, not only because You are called Thrice-Greatest and Best original: Ter-Optimus-Maximus. This title, "Thrice-Best-Greatest," was a common Renaissance adaptation of the Roman title for Jupiter, used here to signify God's supreme perfection.; but also because You alone are the All, to whom the vow of all sanctifying Love properly belongs, since You do not need us, nor can we devote anything else to You. The Prophet cried out, Ah, Ah, Ah, Lord, I cannot speak; behold, I am a child A reference to the biblical book of Jeremiah 1:6, where the prophet expresses his inadequacy and lack of eloquence before God.: but to this I reply O, O, O, Lord, my thoughts fail, and they melt away into a bare vow of Love for the Sanctification of Your Name; for behold, Lord, I am nothing but Nothingness, nor am I anything else, except insofar as it has pleased You that I should belong to You.

O All, of All, and my All-encompassing vow, I rightly seem to offer to You in my native tongue, and even to vow to You, the Fief of my Essence original: Feudum meæ Essentiæ. Using legal terminology of the day, the author describes his very existence as a "fief"—something he does not own outright, but holds in trust from God, his feudal Lord. and of my Self, which, having been invested by You, I use and enjoy with the help of my neighbor. For although the first conception of the soul exists beyond words, and thus without its own language: yet I feel it to be still raw and not yet set apart, until it is refined and, joined to the mind, passes into thoughts, words, and writing. This rawness, I perceive, makes the object of the first conception weak and unstable, and quickly obscures it again. For that reason, Your Eternal Wisdom has permitted it to be carried further, even unto the mind.

It is true indeed, that You wish to be adored in Spirit by men, but not in such a way that it remains in the indistinctness of the first object. On the contrary, even the Angels, pure and simple Spirits, though they may adore You purely in thought as Spirits; yet they busy themselves with a certain melody unknown to us to sanctify Your Sanctifying Name without ceasing. Therefore, You command that You be loved not only from the whole soul and the whole Spirit; but also from the whole heart and all one's strength: so that prayer established spiritually, and bare adoration, at the very least exclude oral prayer that is void of the soul's attention.

Grant, most beloved Lord, that I may suggest this to my neighbors, Your servants, through a comparison: An Organist, hearing a new melody, at first plays it not without difficulty; his soul perceives the sound in part, but his fingers (as the builders of sounds, just as other limbs are the fashioners of words) do not follow so harmoniously,