Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/171



'Why, thou didst say,' she answered, 'that thou knewest not the end of every creature; but learn now that the end of every creature is that which thou hast thyself named, even God. To Him all creature are wending; they have no good to seek beyond this, nor can they find anything higher or outside Him.'

When she had spoke this discourse, she began to sing once more in these words:

'Whosoever will search deeply with earnest mind after truth, and would have no man nor thing to hinder him, let him begin to seek himself that which he sought before outside, and have done with useless troubling, as far as he may, and let him attend to this one matter, and tell his mind that it can find within itself all the good things which it seeketh without. Then will he be able very quickly to perceive the evil and and vanity that he had before in his mind, as clearly as thou mayest see the sun. Thou wilt then perceive thine own understanding, that it is far brighter and clearer than the sun. For no grossness nor infirmity of the body hath power utterly to take away righteousness from his mind, so that he shall have no trace thereof, though bodily sloth and infirmities often vex the mind with a dullness and lead it astray with a mist of delusion, so that it cannot