De visione Dei

How succession is seen in God without succession. I experience your goodness, my God: which not only does not spurn me, a wretched sinner, but sweetly feeds a certain desire. You have inspired in me a pleasing likeness concerning the unity of your mental word or concept, and its variety in things appearing successively. For the simple concept of a most perfect clock: leads me, that I be rapt more savourily to the vision of your concept and word. For the simple concept of the clock: enfolds all temporal succession. And suppose the clock were the concept: then although we hear the sound of the sixth hour before the seventh: yet the seventh is not heard except when the concept commands. Nor is the sixth before in the concept than the seventh or eighth: but in the one concept of the clock, no hour is prior or posterior

MARG: Horologium

than another, for the clock never strikes the hour, except when the concept commands. And it is true to say, when we hear the sixth striking: that then the sixth strikes, because the master concept so wills. And since the clock in the concept of God, is the concept: then one sees in some measure how succession in the clock is without succession in the word or concept, and that in that most simple concept are enfolded all motions and sounds, and whatever we experience in succession. And that all that which happens successively: in no way goes out of the concept, but is the unfolding of the concept, so that the concept gives being to each. And that therefore nothing was before it happens: for it was not conceived before that it be. Let therefore the concept of the clock be as eternity itself: then motion in the clock is succession. Eternity therefore enfolds succession and unfolds. For the concept of the clock which is eternity: enfolds alike and unfolds all things. Blessed therefore be you, Lord my God,, who feed and nourish me with the milk of likenesses: until you grant me more solid food. Lead me, Lord God: through these paths to you. For unless you lead me: I cannot stand in the way, through the frailty of corruptible nature, and the futile vessel which I bear about. I return again trusting in your help, Lord: that I may find you beyond the wall of the coincidence of enfolding and unfolding. And when through this gate of your word and concept, I go in and out: I find sweetest pastures at once. When I find you the power enfolding all things: I go in. When I find you the unfolding power: I go out. When I find you the power enfolding alike and unfolding: I go in alike and go out. I go in from creatures to you the creator, from effects to cause: I go out from you the creator to the creature, from cause to effects. I go in and out at once: when I see how going out is going in, and going in going out at once. As one who counts unfolds alike and enfolds. He unfolds the power of unity: and enfolds number in unity. For the going out of the creature from you: is the creature going in. And to unfold: is to enfold with. And when I see you, God, in paradise, whom there the wall of the coincidence of opposites girds: I see you neither enfold nor unfold disjunctively or copulatively. For disjunction alike and conjunction is the wall of coincidence: beyond which you exist absolute from all that can either be said or thought.