"Moreover, if thou pressest upon me this vocation, I must be favoured with electing grace, so that I become free from all destructive passions which are degrading for a preacher; I must have adequate support for my life instead of being, as I am, besmirched with poverty, which makes one's character deteriorate and ties one's hands. It is certainly true, and I grant it, that contempt of the world has led me to despise myself and to neglect my calling through undervaluing honour. I confess that I have been a sorry guardian of my own person, but that is because of the superiority of my better self which despised the unclean sheath in which thou hast immured my immortal soul. From my earliest years I have loved purity and virtue--verily I have. Yet my life has dragged itself dong in filth and wickedness, so that I often suppose my sins to be punishments inflicted upon me, with the object of arousing in me a permanent disgust of life. Why hast thou condemned me to ingratitude, which I hate more than any other sin? Thou hast entangled me, who am naturally grateful, in snares, in order to compel me to feel obligation to the first benefactor who came in my way. So I have become involved in dependence and slavery, since benefactors demand as compensation control over the thoughts, wishes, inclinations, and devotion,--in a word, the whole soul, of those whom they benefit. Always I have been compelled to withdraw myself, laden with debt and ungrateful, in order to preserve my individuality and manly worth; I have been forced to tear asunder the bonds which threatened to strangle my immortal soul. And that, too, with the spiritual torment and pangs of conscience of a thief who goes his way with some one else's property.